Villagers in Binsey say one of its most romantic corners has been ruined by trees better suited to a supermarket car park.

Peter Lund, who has lived in Binsey for 53 years, with one of the red twigged lime saplings

Residents of the tiny west Oxford village are angry that an avenue of horse chestnuts has been replaced by red twigged limes.

And they accused Christ Church, the Oxford college which owns most of Binsey, of choosing a cheap and ugly option.

While villagers reluctantly accepted that the decaying, diseased horse chestnuts had to go, they say they were appalled by what has been picked for the picturesque approach to St Margaret's Church.

Alison Cobb, who has lived in the village for 21 years, said: "They have planted the cheapest and nastiest available trees. The Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs suggests red twigged limes are 'suitable for industrial areas'.

"Why should lovely Binsey, with possibly the most moving, romantic and historic church in Oxford, be so desecrated by planting it like a supermarket car park?"

Binsey is famed for St Frideswide's Well, a place of pilgrimage in medieval times, which became the Treacle Well in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The horse chestnuts are believed to have been planted in about 1870, when the author's friend, the Rev Thomas Prout, restored the church.

Their removal came as a second blow to villagers, who have already seen the felling of Binsey's famous poplars, celebrated in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Crispin Mahony, of Smith-Woolley, the land agents acting for Christ Church, said: "A lot of time was spent considering the alternatives and we consulted both the Forestry Comm- ission and Oxford City Council.

"It was agreed the best course of action was to fell the entire avenue and replace them with 32 extra heavy red twigged limes to get an instant avenue effect."

He said the continuing presence of fungal infection meant young horse chestnut trees was not an option.