A sticky bomb is one of the latest items to be donated to a people’s museum project.
Former Barnsley resident Stanley Beach, 75, travelled from his home in Leicester to donate the bomb to the Experience Barnsley project after hearing about its appeal for old stories and artefacts.
Mr Beach has had the bomb at his home since he found it in the 1950s when working at the Beatson Clark glass manufacturers.
He said: “The chaps I worked with knew exactly what it was – the factory had made thousands of them during the Second World War.”
The bombs were a type of hand grenade. They were made from a glass sphere containing nitro-glycerine, covered in a powerful adhesive and surrounded by a metal casing.
Mr Beach’s bomb, which consists of just the glass sphere protected in a woolly cover, had been stored under a workbench at his home until he attended one of Barnsley’s History Days while visiting his son in the area.
Gillian Nixon, the council’s Family History Advisor, Archives, said: “This is a highly interesting and unusual addition to the Experience Barnsley collection. It’s a fantastic piece of social history and is just one example of how people in Barnsley helped with the war effort.
“We would love to hear from anyone who worked making these sticky bombs, their family members or indeed anyone who worked in Barnsley’s proud glass industry.”
The Experience Barnsley project aims to build a museum and archives centre on the ground floor of the Town Hall. It is expected to open in 2012.