The dissolution of the monasteries in England during the 1530s began a turbulent period of restructuring. Focusing on devotional spaces in the counties of Wiltshire and Cheshire, Guinn-Chipman looks at how local communities adapted to the effects of religious reform, placing particular emphasis on the responses of those who were resistant to change. She argues for the development of a national identity created from memories of suppressed religious space alongside the formation of a historicized sense of the past following the Civil War.

"'In a spatial approach to religious change, Guinn-Chipman examines forms of reluctant adaptation and the memorialization of traditional practice. Focusing on conservatives and moderates in their local settings, this original study sheds new light on the fragmentation of the cultural landscape and the construction of the past in early modern England.'"