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 Dead Moon

    The Dead Moon

    The moon comes down to the Carrs to investigate the evil spirits that inhabit the place on moonless nights, but slips and is trapped, managing…

  • Crazy Kate, the Witch of Swineshead

    Crazy Kate, the Witch of Swineshead

    ‘Crazy Kate’, the woman on whom this legend is based, was probably, like most ‘witches’, simply a slightly reclusive woman to whom the locals took…

  • The Dead Hand

    The Dead Hand

    A mischievous but likeable young lad called Tom Pattison refuses to take precautions against the evil spirits and boggarts lurking in the Carrs. Ignoring the…

  • Tiddy Mun

    Tiddy Mun

    Tiddy Mun (i.e. ‘small man’ who was, according to the tale, ‘wi’out a name’) was said to be a white-bearded boggart the size of 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.