Norfolk Folk Tales

About this book

Hugh Lupton gathers thirty-three tales connected with Norfolk’s churches, villages, waterways and historic landscapes. The collection moves from the Callow Pit Coffer and the Potter Heigham Drummer to stories of witches, holy wells, bells and hidden treasure, showing how local places acquire layers of legend.

Historical figures appear in folk-memory alongside saints, giants and supernatural beasts, including Anne Boleyn, Edmund, King and Martyr, Tom Paine and Sir Thomas Browne. Four ballad tales and six Norfolk ghost stories sit beside accounts of seafarers, Tom Hickathrift, Old Shuck and the Green Lady. Together, these reports, traditions and remembered tales present Norfolk as a landscape shaped by storytelling.