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
  • 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…

Latest Articles
  • The Flyin’ Childer

    A lad sees a girl washing herself, and offers to marry her if she follows him. She agrees, but says that if he rescinds his…

  • The Faithful Servant

    A fairly widely reported story tells of a servant at Girsby Manor in 1784 who is threatened with being flayed alive by a band of…

  • In the Box

    During a cholera outbreak, a farm labourer heads home to Frog Hall, south of New York (the little one near Coningsby), and sees a horse…

  • King John’s Lost Jewels

    King John’s Lost Jewels

    In 1216, King John was campaigning against rebel barons, which took him through Norfolk and on to Lincolnshire. It is said he sent his baggage…

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.