The family of the girl at the centre of the abortion controversy live in two small caravans parked beside each other on the roadside. There are 12 children in the family, aged two to 17. The windows facing the roadway in the larger of the caravans are broken and stuffed with old clothes and plastic bags.
The road is at the edge of a new housing estate. On one side are the houses, a school, pub and shops. On the far side is an unofficial halting site and land yet to be developed.
Behind the caravan is a mound of fresh muck, wet and muddy from the recent rains, strewn with discarded nappies and other rubbish. Beyond the mound of muck are a few trees, and then a wall which surrounds a council depot.
At the short driveway into the depot, just down from the caravans, the council has placed heavy boulders to stop other caravans stopping there.
The smaller of the caravans is light green and cream, with no glass in the door window. Inside are some worn, shallow, padded benches and a built-in press. The caravan is used for sleeping. There is a heater in the press.
The family uses the other caravan for cooking and eating and sitting around. This model, though larger, is still quite small. It is silver and white. One end is partitioned.
The window beyond the partition stretches the width of the caravan and the glass is broken.
The main body of the caravan is covered with light-brown lino. Yesterday it was covered with rain and mud brought in on shoes. There was a small gas stove with two rings, and a large pot of washed potatoes on one unlit ring.
The caravan has an open metal fireplace, and a warm briquette fire was burning, with no screen in front of it. A small metal pipe cut through the roof serves as a chimney.
There is a shelf or small built-in press with no doors along the top of the walls. It was crammed with tins of beans and other tinned foods, large packets of sausages and breakfast cereal. A sack of potatoes stood on the floor.
The family has a television. It is run by a small generator which they keep outside, between the caravans, covered with old clothes "so it won't get stolen", according to one of the children.
Across the road, over a mound of grass where a few horses graze, there is an established, though unofficial, travellers' camp or site. Each gravel-covered plot has a number of caravans, with one family in each.
Each plot has a tap and a toilet, the toilets being tin structures shaped like a shower unit and not much bigger. There are about 14 plots.
It seems the family at the centre of the abortion controversy are not welcome in the camp, even to use the toilets and the water taps.
Yesterday afternoon secondary schoolchildren walking home from school in their uniforms stared at the mud-covered children in the caravan.
"What are you staring at?" shouted one of the traveller girls, standing in the doorway. "What are you being so nosey for?"
A boy detached himself from a group of schoolboys and came over to have a quiet word with this reporter.
"Every day when we are coming home from school we get hassle. They come out with their sticks and hassle us."
He was referring to all the traveller children.
Up on the grass mound, a young male traveller stood clutching a wooden hockey stick.
