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 Serpent Slain at Walmsgate

    A tradition, which probably took its rise at an early period, tells of a huge serpent that devastated the village of South Ormsby and was…

  • William of Lindholme

    William is accused of selling his soul to the Devil. Legend has it that he agreed to construct a causeway across the wetlands from Lindholme…

  • The Wild Man of Stainfield

    The Wild Man of Stainfield

    A ‘wild man’ allegedly once lived in the woods near Stainfield, and would make raids to kill the locals and their livestock. Variations of the…

  • The Drake Stone

    The Drake Stone

    Outside Anwick’s church, a plough horse vanished in quicksand, and a drake flew out in its place. The following day, a boulder shaped like a…

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.