Weedon Bec gets its name from a period of English history now long forgotten when the Normans ruled the Kingdom and French was the dominant language of church and government.
Duke William brought Lanfranc, the Abbot of Bec in Normandy, to be his first Archbishop and granted Bec extensive land holdings in England. For many years Weedon Bec remained a little-known village in the middle of England until in 1807 the government built a great warehousing complex on a canal cutting off the Grand Union Canal outside Northampton to house the stores and equipment needed for the war that Britain was fighting across four continents.
The Royal Ordnance Depot at Weedon Bec received, consolidated, stored and dispatched every kind of military equipment in barges using the newly developed canal system. It took less than three days for a load from the Depot to arrive at the London Docks from where store ships sailed to the main theatres of war.
