Craven Ord

Craven Ord (1756–1832) was an English antiquarian. He was particularly noted for his brass rubbings.

The younger son of Harry Ord, of the king's remembrancer's office, by Anne, daughter of Francis Hutchinson of Barnard Castle, County Durham, he was born in London in 1756; his uncle, Robert Ord, was Chief Baron of the Scottish Exchequer. To 1829 Ord resided mainly at Greenstead Hall in Essex (near Greenstead Green), where most of his children were born; he died at Woolwich Common in January 1832.

Ord was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 26 January 1775, and of the Royal Society on 3 May 1787. He was for several years vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries.

Ord's life was mainly devoted to antiquarian researches, but he published nothing separately. He contributed to Archæologia. Ord's support was acknowledged by John Nichols, by Gideon Algernon Mantell, and by George Ormerod in their county histories (respectively of Leicestershire, Surrey, and Cheshire).

With Sir John Cullum, Ord assisted Richard Gough in his major work Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain; in September 1780 he went on a tour in search of church brasses in East Anglia, with Gough and Cullum. His method of obtaining impressions of brasses involved: French paper kept damp in a specially prepared case; printer's ink; and rags. He inked the brass, wiped it clean, laid on the paper, covered it with some thicknesses of cloth, and then trod on it. He finished the outlines at home, cut out the figures, and pasted them in a large portfolio. His collection of impressions of brasses, bound in two volumes, in deal boards over six feet in height, was purchased by Thorpe the bookseller in 1830.

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