For centuries they ploughed the fields of England, shaping much of the landscape of East Anglia, before being harnessed for battle during the First World War.

Yet the Suffolk Punch horse - Britain's oldest native breed - is now critically endangered, its numbers in sharp decline a victim of the rapid mechanisation of agriculture.

The plight of the breed – deemed to be rarer than the giant panda or even the Siberian tiger – has moved one landowner to appeal for an organised campaign to save them from oblivion.