Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project

A project exploring the origins, legacies, connections and futures of folk tales in Lincolnshire, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2/2024-7/2025) and hosted at Nottingham Trent University.



Our books:
Rory Waterman, Devils in the Details: On Location with Folk Tales in England’s Forgotten County (Five Leaves, 2026), exploring folk tales across Lincolnshire, and the places associated with them.
Anna Milon and Rory Waterman (eds), Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined (Five Leaves, 2025), featuring fourteen of Lincolnshire’s finest writers reimagining local folk tales.

news
  • Rory Waterman I’m not a ‘guest writer’, I’ll confess: I was the project lead on the Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project during its funded period, and now keep the website going on my own. But please excuse the indulgence. My new book, Devils in the Details: On Location with Folk Tales in…

Latest Articles
  • The Gaps in History where the Stories Grow

    The Gaps in History where the Stories Grow

    “What’s the one landscape you would want to avoid after dark?” Virginia Crow weaves a compelling hypothesis about the origins and fate of the Amcotts…

  • Horkstow Grange

    Horkstow Grange

    One of the best known folk songs with a Lincolnshire setting. Horkstow Grange is south of Horkstow. The song concerns a fight between a farm…

  • Brinkhill Gold

    Brinkhill Gold

    An unexpected discovery in Brinkhill, East Lindsey in the early 17th century led to the Tudor Gold Rush. Or rather, an interest in prospecting that…

  • For Want of a Hunt

    For Want of a Hunt

    The Wild Hunt is a folkloric motif well known across the British Isles and on the Continent. Its basic structure is that of a supernatural…

About the project

‘Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures’ is a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/Y003225/1), and is led by Dr Rory Waterman and the Research Fellow Dr Anna Milon in the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University. The project explores the origins, legacies, intertextual and social connections and futures of Lincolnshire folk tales (LFTs), and is intended to facilitate wider engagement with this heritage from writers, the general public, and scholars.