Sommerfeld and Thomas Warehouse

The Sommerfeld and Thomas Warehouse is a waterfront warehouse dating to the mid-18th century and originally owned by a prominent Kings Lynn brewing family. It was subsequently altered and extended in the 19th and mid-20th centuries.

The warehouse is constructed of buff brick with stone sills to the window openings, and has a pantiled roof with lead-covered hips. The original plan was linear in form, although rear ranges had been demolished by 1950.

The building presents a symmetrical design of seven bays and three storeys with an attic. The principal central entrance rises through two storeys, featuring a segmental arched head which is now partially obscured by 20th-century sliding door gear. The ground floor has two single, gauged brick segmental arch-headed openings with shallow stone cills to each side of the entrance, and beyond them, sliding double doors to each of the end bays. At first-floor level are single taking-in doorways to bays two and six, while the remaining bays each have a single-light window opening. The second floor mirrors this arrangement, with a single-light opening in each bay. The roof incorporates two wedge dormers to the front slope and one dormer to each of the hip slopes. The small window openings are fitted with shuttered two-light wooden frames. The rear elevation is heavily altered, with rendered walling, enlarged original openings, and additional ones. The south end of the building bears the scar of a former attached building.

Internally, the warehouse has massive bridging beams, carried on the front and rear walls, which support substantial, closely-spaced joists. Many beams are supported mid-span with substantial square posts. The warehouse floors are pierced in the central bays by single hoist door openings with hinged doors that open upwards. A simple straight stair flight provides access to each floor in the bay to the south of the entrance bay, with a vertical ladder providing ground-floor access to the rear wall. The interior to the north of the entrance bay has been altered at ground-floor level to provide derelict office and toilet facilities. The first, second, and attic floors are open throughout. The roof structure consists of substantial rafters with two tiers of staggered purlins carried on principal rafters arranged three to each bay. Collar timbers are present to each pair of principal rafters, those in the central bay supporting the hoist wheel and its cradle located above the hinged hoist doors.