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 Green Mist

    The story of a young woman who grows thin and pale. She wants the green mist that signals spring to rise over the fields, believing…

  • The Dragonby Dragon

    The Dragonby Dragon

    The Dragonby ‘Dragon’ is a natural limestone formation, about ten metres long, with a discernible ‘head’ and ‘tail’. According to legend, it is the body…

  • The Pilford Bridge Spirit

    The Pilford Bridge Spirit

    It was believed the ghost of a witch lurked beneath this bridge (or its precursor) over the River Ancholme, and would come out to push…

  • Old Mother Nightshade

    Old Mother Nightshade was a witch, feared by all apart from the young and foolish John Culpepper, who sought her counsel after being rejected by…

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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