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Songs of Praise Dickensian Christmas special - did you catch it?
In November the BBC approached the school - former home of Charles Dickens whose novels helped perpetuate the image of a very traditional Christmas - as part of the television station’s 200th anniversary celebrations of the great man’s birth.
As part of the filming, a number of pupils were asked to play the novelist’s family and classic characters from his books. Ten-year- old Tyler Rodberg landed the part of a young Dickens, while seven-year-old Ethan Bromley, who was asked to played Tiny Tim, was joined by Autumn Ibanez, nine, Jemima Bischoff, ten, and eight year-old Conor Mackay who played his sisters and brother in an interpretation of a scene from a ‘Christmas Carol’.
Elsewhere, Olivia Black aged ten, Katie Hergest, nine, and seven year-old Luis Le Grove played Victorian urchins while Bethany Sparshott, 12, played Charles Dickens’ daughter.
Harriet Hammond and Jude Stanbury Hill also formed part of the congregation.
Featuring popular broadcaster Aled Jones, the Songs of Praise show, broadcast yesterday (11th December) discovered more about Dickens’ life in Kent, including his time at Gad’s Hill Place, where classic novels such as ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ were penned from 1856 until the authors death in the school’s dining room 1870.
The broadcast is available via the BBC's iplayer by following this link bearing in mind that it will only be available to watch online or download for the next 7 days.