Grave of war horse Blackie given heritage protection
Four-legged veteran of First World War that helped inspire Morpurgo gets new historical status
THE first war horse grave has been given heritage protection as Historic England celebrates unusual sites.
The grave in Halewood, Merseyside, received a Grade II listing this summer and commemorates Blackie, which served in most of the major battles of the First World War, including Arras, the Somme Offensive and Ypres, where it suffered severe shrapnel wounds.
It joins 1,040 other monuments, places and buildings awarded heritage protection this year.
Horses were widely used in the First World War when an estimated eight million were killed by enemy action, disease or starvation. Their story was celebrated in War Horse, Michael Morpurgo’s acclaimed children’s novel, which was turned into an award-winning play, then 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.
It belonged to Lieutenant Leonard Comer Wall, a war poet from Kirkby, who in his will requested that if he did not survive the conflict, his horse should be buried with his medals and decorations. Lt Wall died at Ypres in June 1917 aged 20, and he was riding Blackie at the time. Despite the horse’s injuries from the same incident, Blackie remained in service on the Western Front for the rest of the war.
After the war, Lt Wall’s mother Kate brought Blackie back to England, making it one of only a small number of horses to return home. She lent it to the Territorial Riding School in Liverpool until it was retired to live at the Horses’ Rest in Halewood in 1930, where it remained until its death at the age of 37, in December 1942.
Historic England said: “Blackie’s death received press coverage across Britain, from the local Liverpool Daily Post to the Gloucester Citizen, Portsmouth Evening News, and Dundee Evening Telegraph.”
The horse is buried in the northwest corner of the western field adjoining Higher Road in Halewood.
The agency said it decided to give the grave protection as part of its First World War centenary listing project, in which it will recommend up to 2,500 more war memorials for protection in the next five years.
War Horse Memorial, a charity that supports infantrymen and their horses and which is to unveil its own memorial next year, said: “It’s been 100 years since the First World War. Recognition of the part horses played is long overdue. This war horse grave will go some way to redress the balance.”
Other sites recognised this year included the Skegness Esplanade and Tower Gardens, Lincs, where Billy Butlin opened his first Butlin’s holiday camp in 1936, and the predecessor of radar, a set of “acoustic mirrors” carved in the cliff face at Fan Bay, Dover, used during the First World War.