DIGITAL WORKS/CRAY DOCUMENTARY: The Vindication of Christmas

In the Summer of 2022, the young members of CRAY worked with Matt Rosenberg and Sav Kyriacou of Digital Works, to create our documentary film.  The film looks at how Parliament’s cancellation of Christmas in 1644, led to the the Plum Pudding Riots in 1647 and the Second Civil War in 1648.  The group interviewed a number of leading historians at some awe-inspiring venues. This included Bexley Local Studies and Archives, Canterbury Christchurch University, Canterbury Cathedral, The National Archives, The Mithraeum, The Household Cavalry Museum, The Parliamentary Archive, Westminster Abbey, The National Army Museum and the National Civil War Centre, Newark. The interviews with these historians, who specialise in the English Civil War, were combined with the outputs we created with animators Zoom Rockman, and Tom Hillenbrand of Beautness Animation and the 3DVR recreation of Crayford in 1648 made with RH Viz to create our finished film.

The running time for our completed film is forty-three minutes.  We hope the documentary will enable local people to learn how the momentous national events of the 1640s impacted on our small town of Crayford and the rest of Kent.

Look out for how we worked together as a team to make the film with Digital Works during the credits at the end of the film.