Caravan-dwellers repeatedly pitch up around the borough before being evicted by police and Merton Council - only to appear again down the road.

But we rarely hear about who these people are and why they choose an itinerant lifestyle over bricks and mortar.

Danny Jeeves, 22, is a Romany Gypsy who has made a thin strip of land between Deer Park Road and the railway track in south Wimbledon his home for the past nine months.

"It's what you call being free", he says. "I don't like houses because I don't like being trapped. Being within four walls is like being in jail."

The council road-sweeper, who spends his working day in the more salubrious setting of Wimbledon Village, lives in a retro caravan with his 17-week-old puppy Tinker, a Jack Russell-Plummer cross.

Outside his one-room home he maintains an organised area with council bins to store and chop wood for the stove and boil the kettle.

He has also built a small wooden hut "so when guests come they can use a proper toilet."

But Mr Jeeves is now getting ready to move on, after police ordered him to get off the land by Monday, or face prosecution.

"It's a shame. I know it seems stupid but it's your home and it's gutting to be turfed-off", he says.

And with fewer and fewer parcels of land in south-west London in disputed ownership, he says he doesn't know where he will go next.

Born in Denham, Buckinghamshire, he spent his childhood in between caravans and houses, eventually moving to Rose Hill in Sutton where his parents live in a house.

"Most of the lads down here have to be here but for me personally this is a choice", he says. "My father always says to me come back home.

"But living in a house is not what you call being free. You're stuck, you have to do this and you have to do that.

"If you don't like where you live because you don't like your neighbhours that's it and I'm off."

Mr Jeeves' caravan is one of several in Deer Park Road.

Two were occupied by Polish men who have since left while another is inhabited by a painter called Jim, he says.

Merton has attracted gypsy and traveller communities for hundreds of years, with travellers traditionally coming to pick watercress and lavender in the borough's parks.

Wimbledon Times:

Showmen's gypsy caravans on Three Kings Piece in Mitcham. Picture: Merton Memories Archive

The 2011 census recorded 217 gypsies or travellers living in Merton, although many organisations have estimated the real number is higher.

Merton's traveller community is predominanty English Gypsy, with a small number of Irish heritage and Eastern European Roman families.

Wimbledon Times:

Gypsy site in Plough Lane, Wimbledon. Picture: Merton Memories Archive 

However, some estimates show that up to one third of the population of Mitcham may have Roma heritage, according to Merton Council.

But there is only one authorised caravan site in the borough, with space for just 15 caravans.

Wimbledon Times:

A traveller site in Morden Common c.1936. Picture: Merton Memories Archive 

The council is currently developing a strategy to work with other public bodies and the gypsy and traveller community to identify and address its needs in terms of planning, housing, health, education and cultural issues.