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.



Get the project anthology, Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined, published in March 2025 and featuring many of Lincolnshire’s finest writers reimagining local folk tales.

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  • Fabulous Coffee

    What happens when folk tales and coffee come together? Rory Waterman finds out by talking to Seven Districts Coffee founder Ben Southall.

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  • The Lincoln Imp

    The Lincoln Imp

    The Lincoln Imp is a tiny thirteenth-century cross-legged grotesque above the Angel Choir and the tomb of St Hugh in Lincoln Cathedral, overlooking the altar.…

  • Black Dog (also Black Shuck or Hairy Jack)

    Black Dog (also Black Shuck or Hairy Jack)

    In most traditions, phantom dogs are usually sinister or malevolent, or even portents of impending death; in many Lincolnshire stories about them, however, they are…

  • The Holbeach Gamesters

    The tale of three men who were playing cards in the Chequers Inn, Holbeach (which closed a few years ago), and talking about a friend…

  • Fan o’ the Fens

    Fan o’ the Fens

    A beautiful young woman from near Louth, called Fanny and known as Fan o’ the Fens, lives with her widowed mother, who complains that a…

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.

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