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.
Dr Anna Milon Anna was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project throughout its AHRC-funded duration, from February 2024 until July 2025. She is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate on Project StoryMachine, so this is a ‘guest post’, but also not quite a guest post! The hamlet…
A foolish lad tells his mother he would like to buy a pottle of brains because he is tired of being stupid, and she gives…
A boulder near Winceby, on the site of the Battle of Winceby (1643) – in which Oliver Cromwell was almost killed but eventually proved triumphant…
A feckless farm labourer, Tom, is walking to the farm when he hears what he thinks is the cry of a baby. He discovers Yallery…

In one legend associated with this stack of rocks that apparently used to be one large boulder shaped like a sack, the seventh-century Roman missionary…

‘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.