The bungalows are built in two rows —one row behind the other—and the burial of refuse in the garden, so far as the front row is concerned, has therefore to be done in full view ot the front windows of the bungalows in the rear rank. Water is laid on to each bungalow and in the scullery there is a sink, with a bucket underneath to catch the waste water. When the bucket is full it is emptied into the ditch which runs parallel to the line of dwellings and a yard or two away from the front windows.

After eighteen years of this sort of practice, the ground over the whole area has become heavily impregnated with water and waste products, with the result that many of the bungalows, in the words of one of the tenants, are “reeking with damp.” There are complaints that the children “have always got sore throats” and in one case an 1l year old girl, daughter of an agricultural horseman, has just returned from hospital after an attack of scarlet fever.

The ditches bordering the estate e flow out into a common ditch just below the lower end of the two lines of houses. From here, the effluent is taken underneath the road to a pond opposite. During the recent bad weather, when the area shared the common flood conditions, the wate ran over the road. Both the common ditch and the pond opposite are choked with weeds and covered with green and black slime. Sometimes, the ‘ditches become blocked and when this happens, as it did last week, the road at ‘the lower entrance to the estate itself becomes covered with polluted water and mud. Overall, an unpleasant odour persists and the tenants say it becomes intensified in hot weather, | was choked with undergrowth and over it was a layer of greasy green growth. A small open gulley through which the water drains into the pond, was coated with black mud. On the opposite side of the narrow road was an open ditch, similarly, choked with weeds and undergrowth and here the water was topped with a greyish-white froth. Mr.

George Carter, a prominent local farmer, clerk to the parish council of Stowupland, and one of the parish’s representatives on Gipping Rural District Council, said his cows used regularly to drink the water at the pond. “I daren’t let them do it now,” he said. “I have had to screen my meadow from the pond with barbed wire.” Skirting a corner at the lower entrance to the estate is another ditch, where some attempt had recently been made at cleaning. Here, there was more mud and filth and a “tide mark” of black mud, tinged with green, showed the extent to which the ditch had recently overflowed into the roadway. There was an objectionable smell.

One of the bordering ditches runs alongside the garden of Mr. Percy Kerry. This ditch had also been cleaned out and the greasy mud had been piled along the edge of the garden. “How can we empty buckets on to our gardens now that the gardens have been sown with vegetables?” asked Mr. Kerry. “They have put all this mud by the side of my garden and the smell has been dreadful,” he added. Mrs. Kerry commented: “I hope they will do something soon. My children are always complaining of sore throats. Can you wonder at it?” A second ditch, running along the front of the entire row, was half-full of dirty water. Forced to take the only steps they can if their garden is not to become saturated with waste water, the tenants of this bungalow have constructed their own soak-away. Other occupiers have similar make-shift arrangements. The picture shows a housewife emptying the slops into a drum let into a hole in the ground. (Photos: Wilden, Stowmarket.) {Suffolk Chronicle, published Friday, 25 April 1947}