THE ORDNANCE AND THE ORDNANCE SURVEY - OFFSPRING OR FOUNDLING

No statement appears to have been made at the time of why the national survey was put in hand in 1791. How far the Ordnance launched it in furtherance of its own responsibilities for the defence of the realm, and was therefore right to confer on the ordnance survey the prestige of its name, is a question which this article considers. The Board of Ordnance was a department of state which was already by then two and a half centuries old. Furnishing the ordnance survey with scientific and administrative skills and Ordnance also lumbered it with the political difficulties which led to its own demise.