The mud victims are the residents of Quorn Road, who found that the penalty for asking the Council to lay a sewer was considerable inconvenience.

The pile of mud thrown up from trenches grew daily outside their front doors, cutting them off from Washbrook Road. Came the rains and the ‘road’ resembled a first-class quagmire.

But reward is due. Two houses have already been connected up and owners report “all satisfactory.” The others, from behind a sea of mud, are impatient and say harsh things about the Council, the workmen, and – needless to say – about the mud itself.

Dreadful

Mrs. M. Shrive, of the end house, “Mandeville,” was particularly emphatic, for when a reporter saw her she was standing on a little hillock of mud outside her front door and considering the prospect of shopping.

“I shall just have to go back,” she declared, when she decided that her bootees would not stand the strain. “Isn’t it dreadful? I’ve been unable to get out of the front door since Christmas.”

Like the other residents of Quorn Road, Mrs. Shrive has an emergency exit, through the hedge and along the railway bank.

As she led the way, she said: “I have to go along the railway bank, and it is pretty sticky along there now. I haven’t been out in the evening since New Year’s Eve. It’s terrible to grope your way about in the dark.

“We have waited all these years for a sewer, and, my goodness, they choose this time of the year to do it. I wouldn’t mind if they were doing the road as well, but they will just churn it up.”

Mr. E. Young, of 80, Washbrook Road, uses the route every day when he goes to feed his chickens.

The residents on the other side of the road make their escape along Woodland Road.

“It is a bit sticky,” he said, “but it’s getting better now. It has been awful. A man would be prepared to pay to have a different road, I should think.”

“We were glad to get a sewer, but we don’t like this mess,” said Mr. Butcher, of “Sunnyside,” as he surveyed his garden fence, now shored up with three pieces of wood as a bulwark against a mound of earth which runs right across the gate.

“It’s has been like this since Christmas. We have had to get out by Woodland Road. We couldn’t see the bungalow across the road from the downstairs window because of the pile of mud.”

Like the other residents in the road, Mr. Butcher had a garden in front of his fence, which is 13 feet from the centre of the road.

Now his garden has disappeared, though his transplanted spring cabbage “happen to be doing all right.” He does not complain about the loss of his plot. “We expected that,” he says.

Nearer the end of the road, Mr. H. Allen reported that he had been stranded a day or two, but was “pretty comfortable” now.

The foreman for Messrs. McMahon and Son, the contractors, said that the mud would be cleared in less than a week, and it would not be long before the rest of the sewers contracted for were completed.