Travellers move on - to village green
A GROUP of travellers who prompted outrage after setting up camp on Southwold Common has now moved eight miles north to the tiny village of Brampton.A convoy of caravans arrived on Sunday afternoon in Southwold, where 10 families pitched up on the common, with several vehicles, ponies and dogs.
A GROUP of travellers who prompted outrage after setting up camp on Southwold Common has now moved eight miles north to the tiny village of Brampton.
A convoy of caravans arrived on Sunday afternoon in Southwold, where 10 families pitched up on the common, with several vehicles, ponies and dogs.
But now Brampton is playing host to the travellers, who have set up on the village green in the small community near Halesworth.
Traveller Bill Lee, 39, had said the group planned to leave Southwold this Sunday. But he, his wife and three teenage daughters, who had travelled up from Essex, left the common on Wednesday morning.
He said: 'We haven't been welcomed with open arms. The local community is a bit scared of us, but there's nothing to be scared of. We're only human like everyone else.
'We only came down here to bring the kids to the seafront and just for a weekend break really, but we've been hassled since the moment we got here.'
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John Miller, chairman of the Southwold Common Trust, which looks after the land, said the travellers had been asked to leave and the trust was considering legal action.
But the trust will no longer have to seek a court order after the group moved on.
Mr Miller said: 'To everyone's surprise they loaded their horses into boxes, formed a line of vehicles and left.
'They were on their way out of town by 9.30am - much to everyone's relief.'
Mr Miller said the travellers had left little evidence of their stay and had tidied up after themselves. But, he said, they had left 'a lot of horse manure'.
Brampton villagers, meanwhile, held an extraordinary parish meeting to decide what action would be taken following the arrival of the travellers on the green.
One resident said they had 'begun to decimate the village green, siphon off water for their horses and use the village hall electricity for their own caravans'.
The parish council confirmed after the meeting that they and local police officers would be serving notice on the travellers, requesting them to move on by Friday.
