Public invited to fill in gaps about obscure English buildings

Historic England hopes to breathe life into structures such as a Leicestershire gibbet post and a ducking stool in Canterbury

Historic England, the body responsible for listing historic structures, is for the first time inviting the public to fill some of the gaps about the more curious and obscure buildings and structures on its register.

So although poor Hannah Twynnoy's tombstone, near Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire, makes it brutally clear what happened in 1703 - "She had not room to make defence; for Tyger fierce Took Life away" - nothing is known of what happened to the tiger that killed her, the travelling menagerie from which it came, the animal's owner or who paid for what would have been a relatively expensive memorial to a poorly paid working woman.