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.


STEVE LOWE Steve Lowe’s debut psychological horror short story, set in the heart of Lincoln, is The Seam Remains, and is available now on his Amazon Author Page. In this blog post, he discusses his fascination with Lincoln and its history and mythology, and discusses his writing processes. If you’d…

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.…

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

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…

‘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.