GIPSIES DE LUXE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 39, 14 August 1926, Page 20

GIPSIES DE LUXE

RADIO AND SHOPS.

A groat gipsy encampment with wireless, a church, shops, and its own water supply has sprung up on the Belvedere Marshes, tho green stretch of riverside lowland beyond Abbey Wood, Kont, England (says the London "Daily News"). It is a happy-go-lucky colony of hundreds of people, most of whom prefer the gipsy life and the remainder seem to be victims of tho housing shortage.

Built partly on wheels, it 3 wooden walls suggest the beginnings of a mushroom town in the "Western States. People are living in caravans, and houses and huts are made of almost every known building material except the right kind. There are homes mado out of tops and bottoms of old furniture vans, two-room flats out of tram cars and railway coaches, houses of wood, tin, rusty old iron, tarpaulin, metal sheeting and walls strengthened by broken bedsteads. There are gay freshly-painted caravans worth from £200 to £300.

Goats, chickens, pigs, dogs, and cats, and children all romp about together near a pear and apple orchard white with blossom. The colonists have sunk their own little artesian wells,' opened shops in the rough, unpaved main street, and a few of tho inhabitants of the wooden houses have gone in for wireless. An ex-soldier has built for himself and family one of the best houses in the colony. "I used to live at Plumstead," he said, "but I guarantee you cannot find a healthier place for kiddies than this. It. has saved -my child's life and my wife has put on two stone. The children in tho encampment arc strong and rosy-cheeked, and I say you won't find a healthier lot anywhere around London."