The first ever war horse grave has been given heritage protection as Historic England celebrates unusual listings.

The grave in Halewood, Merseyside, is one of more than 1,000 historical sites given heritage protection in 2017, the government's heritage agency said.

The grave received a Grade II listing this summer and commemorates Blackie, who served in most of the major battles of the First World War, including Arras, the Somme Offensive and Ypres, where he suffered severe shrapnel wounds.

It joins 1,040 other monuments, places and buildings awarded heritage protection this year, including the gardens where Billy Butlin opened his first holiday camp and "acoustic mirrors" used for detecting aircraft before radar.

Horses were used widely in the First World War when an estimated eight million were killed by enemy action, disease or starvation. Their story was famously recognised in Michael Morpugo’s celebrated children’s novel War Horse, which formed the basis of an award-winning play and a film adaptation by Steven Spielberg in 2011.

Blackie is thought to have been born around 1905 and served with the 275th Brigade Royal Field Artillery 'A' Battery - 55th West Lancashire Division during the First World War. He belonged to Lieutenant Leonard Comer Wall, a war poet from Kirby, who in his will requested that if he did not survive the conflict, his faithful horse should be buried with his medals and decorations.