Ordnance Office N/A

The Board of Ordnance was a British governmental office founded during the Tudor period, with headquarters in the Tower of London. Its primary role was “to act as custodian of the lands, depots and forts required for the defence of the realm and its overseas possessions, and as the supplier of munitions and equipment to both the Army and the Navy”. It also maintained and directed the Artillery and Engineer corps, founded in the eighteenth century. The Board lasted until 1855, when it was disbanded during the Crimean War because of poor performance in supplying the Army in Russia.
The Board was incorporated into the War Office by an 1855 Act of Parliament as the Department of the Master-General of the Ordnance, Following unease after the Second Boer War that the British Army had been ill-equipped, a new office called the Ordnance Board was created within the Ministry of Defence. It survived until the mid 1990s when it was renamed the Defence Ordnance Safety Group

From the mid-seventeenth century the Board began to use land at Woolwich for storing and proving its guns. Woolwich (later renamed the Royal Arsenal) continued to serve as Britain's principal ordnance depot until the mid-twentieth century. During the Napoleonic Wars fear of attack from the sea, a depot was established ta Weedon Bec in Northamptonshire, connected to the Grand Union Canal

The Arms of the Board of Ordnance first appeared in the seventeenth century, and were given royal approval in 1806, confirmed by a grant from the College of Arms in 1823.