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Horkstow Grange
One of the best known folk songs with a Lincolnshire setting. Horkstow Grange is south of Horkstow. The song concerns a fight between a farm bailiff and a worker John Span, alias Steeleye, from which the band took its name – though they didn’t record a version of it until 1998.
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Brinkhill Gold
An unexpected discovery in Brinkhill, East Lindsey in the early 17th century led to the Tudor Gold Rush. Or rather, an interest in prospecting that seemed not to spill beyond the local region, but quickly became mythologised…
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Cadeby Hall
This unobtrusive stone marker on the verge of Barton Road (A18 between Wyham and Cadeby) could be mistaken for a milestone. Instead, it is a memorial for a young man called George Nelson, who died on the spot after either being thrown by his horse or trapped under an upturned cart in the roadside ditch
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Tabshag
Old Dawson, or “Tabshag,” the soubriquet by which he was more commonly known, lived with his wife the rather wild existence of a squatter, on the waste. He kept a pig, and was wont to boast that he possessed the highest pigsty and the lowest barn in the country…
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The Stamford Bull-run
The Stamford bull-run was a town tradition from late medieval times until 1839, when this cruel practice was eventually banned. According to legend, the tradition started in the early thirteenth century, after two bulls were seen settling a romantic dispute over a lovely cow on what is now Town Meadows by William de Warenne, Early…
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The Grimsby Imp
A less famous counterpart to the Lincoln Imp, who according to legend caused mayhem in Lincoln Cathedral and was subsequently turned to stone. The Grimsby Imp is his supposed companion…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 