Paul Saunders with one of the Easter Island-style heads

NEIGHBOURS fought bitterly to save them – and now chopped-up trees on a housing estate are the source of a new split in opinion after being turned into a series of striking sculptures.

The large Easter Island-style heads that have recently appeared on the forecourt of Dixon Clark Court near Highbury and Islington tube station are made from the sawn wood.

While some residents have given them the thumbs up, critics say they are ugly.

Eric Chaline, who chairs the tenant management organisation, admitted the sculptures could be “a bit marmite” and that some “may have reservations but I’m not sure if anyone’s said they don’t like them”.

He added: “Anecdotally, from the residents, people seem pleased.”

The decision to turn the trees into sculptures was taken at a committee meeting, he said, but wasn’t a “life or death issue” – and that another committee member, Paul Saunders, had organised the work after people had said “yeah, great idea”.

Of the designs, Mr Chaline said they’re a “work in progress” but will look “quite fun” when they’re in place on their plinths and surrounded by shrubs. “They’ll be sort of hidden in the vegetation,” he added.

Mr Saunders acknowledged there had been a “mixed bag” of responses but overall “people in the building love it – kids love it”. He said the sculptures would give Dixon Clark Court a “distinctive look”.

Some of the other choices for the design had been a caterpillar and a griffin – but that the heads had been the clear winner in a vote.

Estate manager Bryan Kennedy said “you do grow to like them” and that overall the tenants were in favour of the sculptures.

People living nearby appear to have been less complimentary.

One supporter of the campaign to save the trees said that the “drowning heads” had been “universally panned” by those who lived opposite the block whose windows look onto the forecourt.

Meg Howarth said she “didn’t know one person who likes them” and described the sculptures as “hideous, out of place, and a vanity project”.

She also criticised the decision to cart the trees to a Norfolk-based artist in a “diesel-belching” lorry. The management committee said they used a sculptor who had given them a good deal on costs.

There are around 900 stone statues on Easter Island, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They were made between 1250 and 1500 by the Rapa Nui people, with some as tall as 10 metres and weighing around 86 tonnes – the same as seven London buses.

Mr Saunders said the idea for the statues was born out of desire to “rewild” the estate after a large swathe of green space at the back of the block was also cleared to make way for building works – leaving behind a raft of homeless birds and insects.

He said: “We had a large communal area with very mature shrubs and a tree for nesting birds, so I took it upon myself to start moving all the shrubs to the front.

“I was trying to recreate the environment for the ground-nesting birds. The statues will eventually rot and become ‘bug-hotels’.”