A UNIVERSITY of Winchester student has stepped back in time to play a part in a TV documentary about the Black Death.

Mature student Mark Hobden, 62, can be seen in Channel 5’s The Black Death, made by Dan Snow’s company History Hit.

The semi-professional living history interpreter was filmed pretending to lance the buboes of plague victims. Mark, from Hedge End, specialises in playing surgeons from various periods, with his performances influenced by his former career as a nurse.

READ MORE: City's first books festival attracts more than 1,200 people to a variety of events

In addition to playing a medieval surgeon in Fiery Jack’s Medieval Circus, Mark portrays an English Civil War surgeon and a 17th-century pirate surgeon. The civil war character is based on Richard Wiseman, a 17th-century Royalist Barber-surgeon who later became Charles II’s personal doctor, while the pirate persona is a composite of different real-life sailing surgeons.

Mark makes all his own costumes, based on original items of clothing, and has put together a variety of props including full surgical kits and a set of prosthetic limbs to represent amputations.

Mark said: “My dissertation is on the attitudes to and perceptions of 17th-century surgeons. They are seen as butchers, but they were actually very skilled and professional.”

SEE ALSO: Winchester MP speaks of his pride after meeting King ahead of Coronation

After being diagnosed with prostate cancer, Mark retired early from nursing in 2016 and turned his attention to history. He has now been declared cancer free and is about to complete his degree.

However, that won’t be the end of his studies – Mark has said that he wants to return to Winchester to continue his research on surgeons of the past as part of a Master’s Degree.

The Black Death is available to watch on demand on My5. Mark appears in the first episode, Bring Out Your Dead.