A long grey wet day was abruptly interupted just before 3.30pm this afternoon.

I was stood waiting in a short queue at the local post office when the loudest bang I have ever heard shook the building and lifted the firbe-board tiles to the false ceiling. The few of us in the village shop (same place as the post office) looked around at each other puzzled as to the cause of the explosive noise so I went outside where I could see a large mushroom plume of smoke rising above the fields in the direction of the airfield.

Between the post office and the airfield, roughly in a straight line is a company called Wallop Defence Systems where they make flares, someone who had just driven down the lane which divides the factory site told us that one of the buildings had blown up.

I made the short trip home where everything was ok, and found my wife chatting to a neighbour who had a very large mirror fall off the wall because of the explosion.

We decided to get in the car to try and see what had happened but by the time we arrived near the scene the road had been closed and all we could see across a nearby field was the water from a fire engine being hosed onto the explosion area.

Local news has since reported the debris covered an area the size of a football pitch and sadly one person has died.