Humpty Dumpty Colchester Siege 1648 Fact Check

This tale has two main variants. One is that the original “Humpty Dumpty” was a cannon used by royalists at the 1648 Siege of Colchester, which was finally brought down by Parliamentarian fire.

"Humpty Dumpty was a powerful cannon during the English Civil War (1642-49). It was mounted on top of the St Marys at the Wall Church in Colchester defending the city against seige in the summer of 1648.

From 1996, the website of the ... was protected by the city wall. The story given was that a large cannon, which the website claimed was colloquially called Humpty Dumpty, was strategically placed on the wall....

Within days, pamphlets were produced ... monument marking the site of the execution. The siege is commonly believed to have inspired the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty, which is said to have been the nickname of a large Royalist cannon strategically placed on the wall next to St Mary's ...

Hi Robert - though there are many ... use of a large artillery piece during the Colchester siege. Though there appears to be no actual evidence to prove it, it was reputedly mounted on the tower of St Mary-at-the-Walls (see photo ...

“Humpty Dumpty” is an egg right? Historical evidence suggests that Humpty Dumpty was a cannon. Used by the Royalists during the English Civil War. During a vicious battle in 1648, the cannon fell from a battlement.

An opera based on Daube’s article (“All The King’s Men – believed by this school at least“) was staged in 1968, stating that the combatants actually referred to the war machine as “Humpty Dumpty”. Between these two pieces of fiction, one or more Colchester natives (consciously or otherwise) seem to have appropriated the origin story for their town by co-opting another piece of genuine Civil War history – the aforementioned Siege of Colchester. Instead of the attackers using a “Humpty Dumpty” weapon, this time it’s the defenders. Instead of a siege engine, it’s an artillery piece (manned by “One-Eyed Thompson“). Instead of town walls, we have a hastily fortified church. And instead of a failure to span a gap, the “great fall” is the cannon being blasted from the walls by concentrated fire from the Parliamentarian besiegers.

That finding triangulates the significance of the Punchanello-Humpty-Dumpty discovery by neatly debunking the un-evidenced Royalist cannon myth and providing a most compelling clue to explain its obscure origins (see Sutton 2014a).

The board tells the story of the ... to popular belief, there is no evidence nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty was based upon a Civil War cannon being positioned on the nearby St Mary at the Wall Church....