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.

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Latest Articles
  • William Clarke & his Dog

    William Clarke & his Dog

    William Clarke, aged 44, was hanged in Lincoln Castle in 1877 for fatally shooting a gamekeeper while poaching near Norton Disney. His dog was then…

  • Crowland Abbey: Guthlac & the Demons

    Crowland Abbey: Guthlac & the Demons

    Saint Guthlac of Crowland was of noble Mercian blood. He became a soldier in his teens, then retired to a monastic life in his mid-twenties.…

  • The Dorrington Demons (& Witches)

    The Dorrington Demons (& Witches)

    In A Dictionary of English Folklore, Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud note ‘a type of legend found throughout England’ in which the location of an…

  • Byard’s Leap

    Byard’s Leap

    The hamlet of Byard’s Leap is named for a local story about a witch called Old Meg, who lives in a cave from where she…

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.