Great Western Coffee Shop

This year's brain teaser involves a circuitous journey through (current) GW territory with a central historical theme. The clues relate to the locations of events- there are two types of event. Please identify the following places on the journey, and the historical connection.

1      Our journey starts at the site of two events....
2       ....and progresses to the location of another event, where there is a change of trains
3       This train passes by (but does not go through) a last event,.....
4        .....and goes through the site of another event......
5         .....eventually arriving at a place where three events took place, where there is another change of trains.
6         This train goes through the place of an event with a possible nursery rhyme connection...
7          ....to a place where two more events took place, and where there is a further change of trains.
8          The next train passes through a place where three short events took place...
9           .....and our hypothetical journey ends at the site of a very long event.

Tomorrow we have family visitors, so no clues until late (if at all, and assuming it's not been cracked before then)

OK - no takers so far.

The key is the historical connection - so the first additional clue is The World Turned Upside Down.

Now - historians out there.......

Are these events Battles of the English Civil War?


If so is 5 Oxford, where the city was besieged three times.

Well, my initial thought was civil war sieges, but there aren't enough - and there's the second type of event too. But if that's battles, there's too many, even in the GWR area. But the real problem with fitting those to the clues is the vagueness of the concepts of a railway line going near or through the site of one, given that mostly they don't go through the historic walled part of a town anyway.

Plus of course who's counting - Taunton, Basing House and Worcester have a better claim to three sieges - and you may not even need to count Worcester as two sieges and one battle, since the Battle of Worcester was in effect a very very short siege.

But, prompted to have another look, I think it sort of fits like this:
1. Newbury - two battles
2. Reading - one siege
3. Oxford - not sure why it counts as "last"
4. Stow-on-the-Wold - one battle
5. Worcester - two/three sieges
6. Gloucester - one siege
7. Bristol - two sieges, though one was little more than a day
8. Taunton - usually described as three short sieges
9. Plymouth - beiseged for all of the first civil war

As I am not a historian ... a silence on answers and suggestions from me.   Good to see we have some ideas overnight, though!    Interesting puzzle, way outside my "ken" though!

Not sure what the possible Nursery Rhyme connection at Gloucester is?

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester?

Humpty Dumpty - but to be honest that fits the civil war (any civil war) as a whole, and no-one seems to have a convincing link with any one event or place.

I note that there are two types of events. It doesn't say that the two types are linked.

The World Turned Upside Down was based on Parliament's response to Christmas festivities.

My guess is that the second type of event are Christmas festivities held in specific locations.

The sage of Wokingham almost goes through the card!

Yes - it's the English Civil War (or Wars), it's sieges and battles and the route, and nos 1, 2 and 5 to 9 are all correct and in the right order.

The nursery rhyme is Humpty Dumpty. There is a lot of uncertainty as to what it really referred to, but two of the explanations are that it was either a siege engine or a large but ineffective (or poorly deployed) cannon used at Gloucester by the Royalists. Others claim it was at Colchester.

The World Turner Upside Down was an anti Parliamentarian song of the time complaining at the Commonwealth's suppression of traditional Christmas celebrations. Ironically Billy Bragg used the title for a modern folk song praising the Diggers (a radical group of the period) and the marxist historian Christopher Hill as the title of a book on the radical movements of the time. It is also a well-known pub in Reading (so there's one for you to store away for obscure pub quizzes in future).

So - can anyone resolve 3 and 4 in correct order one's out of order, one is wrong? A glance at a FGW/GWR route map might help.....

That suggests 4 might be Evesham?

Sorry - wrong century.

Any last takers to resolve clues 3 and 4?

Off to work tomorrow, if not solved by the time I am back, I'll put you out of your suspense.

Clue - no 3 is not on the FGW/GWR current network

From a route map, it seems obvious that it is Didcot followed by Oxford (Didcot bypassed by XC so not on GWR map).
By clearly not right otherwise someone else would have got there!

I've come into this a bit late but could they be sites of railway Navvy battles........

Got to get my history books out.

Edit: Whoops, didn't read the previous posts properly.  Back to the school desk..... ::)

The "world turned upside down" was a tune ironically played by the surrendering British army band at the end of the siege of Yorktown. A spiteful Washington (they'd freed his slaves) would not let it play the customary victor's tunes. The irony was lost on the humourless old boy.

Can't see where York would fit though.

Happy New Year,

OTC

Back from work - and the missing place with English Civil War connections at no 3 is.....Wallingford (last royalist stronghold to surrender in the "main" civil war in 1646 when its siege ended, the current GW network runs past it at Cholsey).

So - Oxford is no 4, giving a complete set of Newbury-Reading-Wallingford-Oxford-Worcester-Gloucester-Bristol-Taunton-Plymouth.

The prize (satisfaction of getting it almost all right at the first attempt) must go to Stuving - well done!