With hundreds of mobile homes strewn haphazardly along a maze of dirt tracks, Buckles Lane feels more Wild West than 21st-century Britain.
The site in rural Essex was set up in 1980 as winter accommodation for travelling showmen, but it has since ballooned beyond 31 authorised pitches to more than a hundred.
It is now the biggest traveller camp in Europe with more than 835 static caravans and 1,000 occupants, over two-thirds of whom – according to a council report – are not meant to be living there.
Until recently they included Thomas McKenna, who was jailed in January for using a caravan
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