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.


Rory Waterman I’m not a ‘guest writer’, I’ll confess: I was the project lead on the Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project during its funded period, and now keep the website going on my own. But please excuse the indulgence. My new book, Devils in the Details: On Location with Folk Tales in…
It was customary for PGCE students to present a play at the Lincolnshire Show at the end of the summer term, and it fell to…

The more I walked, the more I started noticing things: the way the mist clung to the fields at dusk, the strange hollows and ridges…

Rory and Anna talk shop about the project, reflect on the year gone by and tease future events (featuring the ghost of a tragically deceased…

The tale of Tom Otter is one of the grisliest stories featured by the Lincolnshire Folk Tales project. The historical event fit for any true…

‘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.