A group of “craftivists” are using thoughtful embroidery to protest about the environmental impact of rail project HS2.

Lizzie Jamieson, Jane Carey, Sue Spencer-Longhurst, Alice Taylor, Annie Peppiatt and Catherine Byrne have meticulously worked the lettering of quotes about trees into handkerchiefs.

They are sending the gifts to their MPs to cause them to ponder the value of ancient woodlands being destroyed to make way for the high-speed rail link whose route borders Oxfordshire and comes close to Banbury.

The women, who live in Wolvercote, West Oxford, Aynho and Jericho are sending handkerchiefs to their own MPs, Layla Moran and Victoria Prentis, and all Oxfordshire MPs.

They are also sending them to Prime Minister Boris Johnson whose constituency includes woodlands at Denham golf course which Mrs Spencer-Longhurst said “are being annihilated”.

She said: “We are ordinary women who are shocked at the destruction of our countryside. We love to walk in the Chilterns. The route of HS2 goes right through the most beautiful landscapes of the Chilterns - we have walked sections of it and witnessed the terrible destruction.

“We have visited the exquisite nature reserve of Calvert Jubilee where cormorants sun themselves to dry their wings on rafts on the lake, the lovely country park at Denham, which the river Colne runs through, Poors Piece near Steeple Claydon - a piece of land that was given to the poor of the parish.”

The friends are also concerned about Jones Hill Wood, an ancient woodland in the Chiltern Hills known as Roald Dahl Wood.

Mrs Spencer-Longhurst said: “He used to go there and it is the inspiration for the storybook Fantastic Mr Fox that many parents have read to their children. We even met Mr Bunce who is the adjoining farmer, perhaps the son of Roald Dahl’s Farmer Bunce.

"This is our English heritage and it is all being unnecessarily and brutally destroyed.”

Mrs Spencer-Longhurst said the group felt “helpless in the face of the chainsaws and bulldozers” and chose embroidery as a means to protest because they could do it in our own homes during lockdown.

They also thought that the time, care and attention they put into it might touch the MPs.

The quotes were chosen because they meant something to each of them. They included ‘Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky’ by author Kahlil Gibran; ‘I am at home among trees’ from Tolkien; and ‘If I were a tree I would have no reason to love a human’ a quote from novelist Maggie Stiefvater.

Mrs Spencer-Longhurst said: “This is an attempt to contact our various MPs in a different way and to ask them to stop and consider the trees, the future, the loss to our children and grandchildren and to think about the importance of mature trees for our survival.

“People must relearn how to live with nature and to stop arrogantly destroying everything in our way.”