Sealed patterns, marked with a red wax seal and kept in the Tower, survive from the 18th century onwards. Infantry swords were largely discarded but patterns were provided for troopers’ cavalry swords and weapons for specialist bodies. Officers still carried privately purchased weapons that conformed to Ordnance patterns. Until about 1710, during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), the Board of Ordnance had usually bought complete weapons from private contractors. Then it began to place separate contracts for the different stages of manufacture and assembly, so that it had greater control. Most gun barrels and locks were made in and around Birmingham.

London gun-makers, mostly in the Minories near the Tower, added the stocks and completed the weapons. The Tower was the central depot. The Ordnance provided the contractors with detailed specifications, including specimens or patterns, and inspected and proved (tested) their work at the Tower, where it was then stamped or engraved with the Ordnance mark. During the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815) such was the demand for weapons for Britain and her allies that an organisation similar to the Tower’s was set up in Birmingham, for the complete manufacture and proving of weapons. In London the Ordnance itself took on the production and assembly of components, with a factory on Tower Wharf as well as at Lewisham.
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