Irish Travellers face eviction from Essex site

Hundreds of Irish Travellers are preparing for a possible eviction today from an English caravan park.

Hundreds of Irish Travellers are preparing for a possible eviction today from an English caravan park.

More than 60 Traveller families have been ordered to leave the site at Cray's Hill in Basildon, Essex, where they have been living for up to eight years.

Martin Collins of Pavee Point, who travelled from Dublin for a weekend protest in Essex against the evictions, said: "The situation is quite tense and volatile."

Around 200 people took park in Saturday's "freedom march" to the offices of Basildon District Council, which had given the families until midnight on Friday to vacate the site.