Bringing History to Life

 Our aim is to make two or three historical dramas every year that will be projects initiated by ourselves.

In addition, we are often asked to make films with or for other organisations. Sometimes an organisation has a funded project which would benefit from a film as part of it - drama or documentary. At other times we have been asked to film events such as the visit of the Sealed Knot to Ashby or the special Remembrance Day commemorations in 2018.

We are based in Ashby de la Zouch and have worked mainly in North West Leicestershire but also in other parts of the county and in Derbyshire. 

Our History

Pudding Bag Productions was founded by Wendy Freer and Mary Barker. Wendy and Mary were the founders of the Film Unit at Ashby de la Zouch Museum in 2010. They closed the Film Unit and formed Pudding Bag Productions as an independent Heritage group in 2013. In 2016 they were joined by a third member, Glenn Mander and later by Sharn Stinson. In 2019 Mary retired.


Quick Flicks

This is our annual public screening of some of the drama films we have made during the year. Most of the films shown at these events are put on our YouTube channel afterwards.   

The first Quick Flicks was in 2015 and from 2016 it has always been a free event, usually held at The Lyric Rooms in Ashby de la Zouch. In 2019, a second evening was held in the Packington Memorial Hall.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, our Quick Flicks evenings for 2020 and 2021, were cancelled. The 2022 Quick Flicks was held at The Lyric Rooms on Thursday May 19th and we are planning to hold the next one in 2024.


Award-winning Films

Our first drama film, A Town Divided; everyday life and strife in Ashby de la Zouch during the English Civil War, was Highly Commended at the 2014 Leicestershire & Rutland Heritage Awards.

In 2016, we were awarded Heritage Group of the Year 2016-17 for Leicestershire. Leicester City and Rutland.

In 2018, our film The Unquiet Grave, made with Grace Dieu Manor School, won the Bringing Heritage Alive category in the County Heritage Awards and our film and project Ann Ayre Hely, a Crimean War Nurse from Ravenstone, was Highly Commended in the Best Research Project category.

In 2021, our film Thomas Pestell, a 17th-century Vicar of Packington was Highly Commended in the County Heritage Awards as was our film A Step On The Ladder.  We were also Highly Commended in the category Heritage Group of the Year.