This is webzine-style guest blog is dedicated to publishing public blog posts on Lincolnshire folk tales and their contexts. It remained regulary updated between February 2024 and July 2025 – the project’s funded period. Occasionally, it will still publish blog posts.
Do you have a story, a piece of art, an anecdote, a relevant piece of creative writing, or an opinion to share? If so, and whatever your age or experience, we would love to hear from you, and (in many cases) to publish your contributions here. Get in touch!
Fabulous Coffee
What happens when folk tales and coffee come together? Rory Waterman finds out by talking to Seven Districts Coffee founder Ben Southall.
Harry the Liar
When I moved to North Thoresby in 1997, I became a “regular” at the New Inn which stands at the eastern edge of the village, near the old Station. There were a number of regular village characters among the patrons, including the remarkable, notorious Harry Parker who lived in one of the railway cottages nearby.
The Village Behind the Folklore
A young girl running into a kitchen with an armful of ‘may’ blossom so terrifies her grandmother that the old woman would hurl her back across the threshold, if she were not so lame. Is this in the 1860s? No. It is 1961. We are in the Lincolnshire village where
Excursion: Hibaldstow
Gemma Garwood ventures to Hibaldstow to create a deep map. Black dogs, enchanted springs, knowledgeable locals and… peacocks (?) may be present.
Folk Memory as Resistance
The book in question is a collection of short fiction that in different ways draws on working-class themes and experience, all ten contributions by working-class writers. The genre is horror. The problem: how do I describe the class-consciousness I developed growing up in a once industrious town in north Lincolnshire…
Jack and the Day of the Fair
We love receiving original contributions of creative writing. Below, you’ll find a new addition to the Jack tale genre, sent to us by Peter Irons, who came along to our recent Folk Tale Day at Mrs Smith’s Cottage Museum, Navenby in February. This story is set in and on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds,…
This Ubiquitous Ghost
The ubiquitous ghost in question – which I find my work now haunted by – is known regionally as Black Shuck, Gytrash, Barguest, Moddey Dhoo, Padfoot and Skriker: broadly, the Black Dog. Typically identified as a black canine that might originally appear as a normal dog, but in some way shows itself to be something…
The Genesis of the 1975 Tom Otter Drama
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 me to devise and direct that year. To be honest, I was stumped until I happened to catch a performance in Sleaford by a Mummers troupe of the tale of…
Fen.Folk Zine: Words from the Creator
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 that hinted at something older beneath the soil, the names of places that sounded like they belonged in half-forgotten myths. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything…
Happy 1 Year Anniversary, LFT!
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 Horncastle duck).
Don’t Be Frit
Rory Waterman, poet and project lead, discusses the poems he wrote that inspired the project.
25 October 2024
Breathing Life into Lost Things
South Holland Shush
John Gallas, poet and contributor to Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined which is due to be published by Five Leaves Publication in February, takes us on a bike ride through South Holland. Bring a wind-cheater.
10 November 2024
Hollie Starling, the author of (among other things) The Bleeding Tree: A Pathway Through Grief Guided by Forests, Folk Tales and the Ritual Year (Rider/Ebury, 2023), discusses the importance of Lincolnshire’s folk heritage to her writing.
14 October 2024
The Werewolf of Dogdyke
A new poem by Mark Temple, and some context about the story behind it. We love Mark’s use of dialect and ballad metre to bring the story alive – which isn’t the only thing that is brought alive here, as you’ll see!
14 September 2024
Casting Stones
Have you found a boggart stone on your travels around Lincolnshire? Is there one close to where you live? Well, maybe. Rory talks to ‘P’, the person behind the Boggartstones project, about folklore, inspiration, inspiring others, local identity and pride, and the distribution of these wonderful things.
18th July 2024
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 
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