<b>By Ruth Tyler
Construction Correspondent</b>

The quality of building work in a picturesque Suffolk village has been called into question after many houses were seen to be suffering from crazy subsidence-style defects.

Properties in Lavenham appear to have moved over the years, with window frames, beams and even roofs appearing to deviate from what should be perfectly straight lines.

<a href="http://www.suffolkgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/lavenham-dodgy-houses-e1424093662730.jpg"><img src="http://www.suffolkgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/lavenham-dodgy-houses-e1424093662730.jpg" alt="lavenham-medieval-houses" width="450" height="281" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-214" /></a></a><center><i>The houses in Lavenham, near Sudbury are on the wonk</center></i>

Last night UKIP claimed the influx of builders from Eastern Europe was to clearly to blame.

A party insider said: "It does not take an expert to see these properties have not been built to the highest of British standards. We have many builders from Poland and elsewhere now working in Suffolk, and they are taking the jobs of British craftsmen.

"There is no way British builders would have allowed such a finish."

But Lavenham Town Council leader Anthony Smythe-Farquar said UKIP were simply missing the point. "These houses were not built by Polish immigrant workers in the past 18 months," he said.

"We are one of the UK's finest and most visited medieval villages, and these houses are actually more than 500 years old. The fact they are still standing at all shows just how well they were built all those years ago."

A spokesman for UKIP added: "OK, then. So maybe the building are over 500 years old. However, the builders probably came from the Ottoman Empire."