245, Southtown Road

This is North Lodge, originally part of a former naval arsenal, dating from 1806 to 1810. It was designed by James Wyatt for the Ordnance Board and built to match the style of nearby No. 244. The site was later altered, likely in 1891, when the Admiralty relinquished it for commercial use.

The lodge is constructed of red brick with slate roofs; the west slope is of graded Cumberland slate, while the remainder is Welsh slate. The building consists of a two-storey, two-window range facing the road, with a three-bay wing extending eastwards at a right angle, which is a later 19th-century addition.

The west front features two late 19th-century tripartite horned sash windows on the ground floor, and two plain horned sashes on the first floor, all without glazing bars. There is a gault brick eaves course and a deep modillion eaves cornice below a gabled roof. Rebuilt internal gable-end stacks are located north and south. A rebuilt round-arched entrance is set into the south gable. There is a blind window on each floor to the left, and three horned sashes without glazing bars to the remainder of the gable. The gable-end is finished with a deep modillion pediment. The rear wing has three one-over-one horned sashes under gauged skewback arches to each floor. There are two multiply-flued ridge stacks with star tops.

Inside, the main ground-floor rooms have six-panelled doors with reveals. A late 19th-century open-string staircase has two square tapered balusters per tread, turned newels, and moulded handrails.

The lodge is a surviving element of the original Board of Ordnance store constructed between 1806 and around 1815, intended to serve the fleet anchored in Yarmouth Roads during the war with France. The original design included parallel storehouses, a quay on the River Yare, and a working area with a small magazine. Later in the 1850s, it was converted into Militia Barracks, and further alterations occurred after it was purchased by Coleman's food manufacturers in the 1890s. Significant buildings from the Napoleonic era, including storehouses and the magazine, were destroyed during bombing in the Second World War.