A LARGE Second World War bomb crater has been found near a former airfield in the New Forest.

The crater, said to be 15ft wide and 8ft deep, was unearthed after the Forestry Commission carried out controlled burning of heather and gorse close to a Neolithic burial ground, near Beaulieu Road station.

New Forest Tourism Association member Phil Howe noticed that a silver birch tree appeared to have survived the fire.

Mr Howe, who organises tours of the Forest, walked across the blackened heathland and discovered the tree was growing in a crater that had been hidden for years by the heather.

“I’ve escorted hundreds of people right past the spot over the past two years without realising it was there,” he said.

“We’ll never know who dropped the bomb or what they might have been trying to hit.”

The crater is about half-a-mile south of Beaulieu Road railway station.

A large military camp is known to have spanned the road during the war.

Other potential targets in the area included the former Beaulieu airfield and a Special Operations Executive base that trained spies and saboteurs.

The Forest was also the scene of intense military activity during the build-up to the D-Day landings in June 1944.

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