Travellers have split opinions for decades with dozens of cases each month of caravans parking up on playing fields and complaints about the mess left behind. After the most recent reports amid new arrivals in Leybourne and Aylesford, three generations of travellers tell Guy Bell about the hatred, discrimination and derogatory remarks they face each day.

Lena Mills, her mother Theresa and grandmother Esther Burt, say they have faced a barrage of abuse while at work and during their day-to-day life.

Barmaid Lena, 24, makes no excuses for travellers who turn sites into tips but wants the public to understand they are not all the same.

She said: “I find that a lot of the time we get judged on the littlest of things such as how we bring our children up.

“It is like we’re at the bottom of the food chain and not worthy of our own voices. We don’t get listened to. We get tarnished with the same brush as those who do wrong and I don’t feel it’s fair.

“When I was at South Borough Primary School, I was pretty much alone. I made a friend and when her mother found out she refused to let her daughter continue playing with me as I was a ‘pikey’.”

Mother-of-three Lena slammed Channel 4 production My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding saying trends such as “grabbing”, an alternative to courting, are unheard of in their family.

She believes the programme and other constant negative portrayals of travellers are some of the reasons behind the stereotypes.

Lena, who lives in Enterprise Road, Tovil, said: “When I went up to Valley Park Secondary School, I was bullied for being a traveller.

“I was always being called pikey, scum, dirt bag and told to go and choke on hedgehogs.

“When my mum found out about it, she gave me a book and told me to take it into school and tell the kids to educate themselves.

“I always find we get judged most by those who don’t know who or what we really are.

“When me and my mum went into shoe shop in Fremlin Walk around three years ago, we were refused a pair of boots and told ‘we don’t serve pikeys’.

“We were in such shock that in this day and age it’s still happening.”

Esther Burt, Lena’s grandmother, recalls her childhood growing up with 11 siblings in Goudhurst and her father having to find a bigger caravan to cater for them all.

The 65-year-old still lives in the same street she grew up in and remembers being accepted by the outside community.

She said: “My parents used to do potato picking and Brussels sprout picking, and then they travelled to Romney Marsh and did cabbage planting and wurzel clumping for the cattle and sheep.

“In exchange for doing this work, the farmers would let us stay on their land so the work was almost like pre-paid rent.

“My mum used to do washing in a tin bath on the fire and when an old man drove past and asked my mother what she was doing, she explained she hand washes her clothes on a rubbing board.

"When I to school, I was bullied for being a traveller... I was always being called pikey, scum, dirt bag and told to go and choke on hedgehogs" - Lena Mills

“He was surprised my mother got her clothes as clean as she did without the use of a washing machine.

“The man then offered his allotment food to us and his garden stream.

“Me and my sister, Mary, started school because he decided to go and help my mother enrol us.”

Mrs Burt gave birth to her daughter and Lena’s mother, Theresa, in 1970 – the same year she moved into the house opposite her own mother and father in Courtenay Road, Tovil.

The family swapped a rolling life in hoppers and caravans in Gloucester and Goudhurst for a settled one in Maidstone after being forced off land where they were staying.

Mrs Burt recalled: “We got pulled off Park Wood field. There was about 10 trailers, all family and friends.

“A week later the council, at 8.30am, came with diggers and put chains around the trailers and forced them onto the road.

“The police then arrived and there was one we were fond of – we always called him ‘uncle Bob’ – as he used to try to help the travellers.

“He helped us pull our trailers in front of Sutton Road, which used to be a bakery and is now a car showroom, and we were there for a month.

“Uncle Bob helped my dad speak with the council, which then got us our house in Courtenay Road, Tovil.

“Some of the pubs would have a sign up saying ‘no gypsies allowed’. In school pupils weren’t allowed to sit with us because they saw us as nothing but pikeys.”

Lena’s mother Theresa Mills, 46, also suffered at the hands of prejudice and noticed the discrimination towards the traveller community worsened as she got older.

She said: “There were a few occasions where if we couldn’t keep up with the latest trends I would stand out more as a traveller as people would assume that’s the reason why we didn’t have the latest shoes and clothes.

“When I was seven I went to All Saints Primary School and at break time they used to sell glass bottles of flavoured milk for 25p.

“When I asked for one the dinner lady started to give me one, but decided to take it back and said I wasn’t allowed it for no reason. Later on she claimed it was because I didn’t say thank you.

“When I worked at a business in Turkey Mill as a cleaner with my two sisters, we had been working there for six months before the worst started.

“I arrived one day and there was a bottle on a desk with a note taped on it saying ‘watch out, pikeys about’. We reported it but was ignored and pushed out of the cleaning company.”

Ulcombe Primary School is known for its high proportion of pupils who come from a traveller background.

Of the 98 pupils currently on the school roll, Ofsted said 60% were from a transient community from gypsy, Roma or traveller backgrounds, according to a report from 2016.

Furthermore, the percentage of pupils from the transient community was increasing each year and was said to be much higher than at the time of the previous inspection in 2013.

There were high numbers of pupils who entered or left the school at different times of the year.

In the two weeks prior to the inspection, eight pupils left and 12 joined and very few pupils had been there since reception class.

Travellers moved into an illegal encampment in Leybourne at the end of last month before heading to Aylesford.

Police received reports the latest lot of camper vans had turned up in Castle Way, at 5.25pm on April 26, where they remained until May 3.

The reports come 12 months after travellers pitched up on the same patch – and then moved on to Aylesford.

Hollywood superstar Orlando Bloom came under fire for using the word “pikey” during an interview on BBC Radio One with Nick Grimshaw.

The Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings actor was asked whether or not he still carried out his own stunts and replied: “I’m still a pikey from Kent, boy, I’m still a pikey from Kent. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of me, boy.”

The actor, originally from Canterbury, tried to explain his use of the word and said he was not using it racially and respected the traveller community.