Next week, architectural historian from the University of Liverpool, Dr Alex Buchanan, will lead the next Werburgh Street Talk, hosted by Chester Cathedral. 

Entitled, 'Dungeons and Virgins', Buchanan's lecture will be imagining the monastic site in the post-medieval period.

This event, on Tuesday 10 December, forms part of an ongoing series of talks planned by Chester Cathedral and friends. 

Each event aims to explore everything and anything related to 30 Saint Werburgh Street, as it develops into an exciting and commercially dense spot in Chester. 

St Werburgh Street leads right up to the Cathedral (Nub News)

Dr Buchanan has been at the University of Liverpool since 2007, having previously worked as an archivist at The Clothworkers Company and Lambeth Palace Library in London.

She said: "My research spans the medieval and post-medieval periods, which I see as intimately connected, neither being understandable without the other.

"Our medieval heritage survives both because of and despite post-medieval interventions and our modern world has both been built on medieval foundations and defined in relation to the medieval past."

During her lecture next week, she will discuss how interest in monastic architecture grew in the years around 1800, and how researchers began studying monastic ruins. 

Chester Cathedral is hosting the event as part of its ongoing series (Nub News)

She will also explore how academics discovered common building plans and dated structures by style, with emphasis on Chester playing an important role in these discoveries.

The event starts at 12pm, at 30 St Werburgh Street, and tickets are free of charge.

You can book your free ticket here.

Dr Buchanan has provided an abstract of her lecture below.

"In England and Wales, the break between the Middle Ages and the early Modern period was marked most visibly by the physical destruction of the buildings of some 900 abbeys, priories and nunneries following the 'Dissolution of the Monasteries' from 1536. 

"Most were razed to the ground, converted to other uses or allowed to disintegrate. 

"Their ruins took on afterlives as sites for melancholic meditation, picturesque landscape ornaments and, eventually, attractions for the developing tourist industry.

St Werburgh Street is now home to many shops and restaurants (Nub News)

"Visitors imagined the decaying buildings as sites of monastic debauchery and Gothic horror, with little understanding of their original uses

"In the modern era, however, a new understanding of monastic sites as evidence for their medieval past emerged. 

"Today's visitors to the monastic ruins owned by English Heritage and Cadw, as well as other sites open to the public, are presented with plans showing the original layout, the dates of construction and often reconstructions of the buildings as they originally stood.

"How did this new knowledge emerge?"