[Peter Hudson]

Good question Keith... I have found a number of publications on the subject however I am unable to track down a history of those Cannon makers ...These must have been Royal Factories and under the staregic control of the Rulers Office...especially in the early days... The tight grip on such factories was done via the chief engineers who were carefully selected...


The Surveyor-General of the Ordnance was a subordinate of the Master-General of the Ordnance and a member of the Board of Ordnance, a British government body, from its constitution in 1597. Appointments to the post were made by the crown under Letters Patent. His duties were to examine the ordnance received to see that it was of good quality. He also came to be responsible for the mapping of fortifications and eventually of all Great Britain, through the Ordnance Survey, and it is this role that is generally associated with surveyor-generalship.