Tower Street

Refurbishment and vertical extension, King’s Lynn

PROJECT FACTS

location

King’s Lynn, Norfolk

PROJECT VALUE

£1.5m

SECTOR

High-End Residential

SCOPE

Refurbishment and vertical extension, new upper storey

The Brief

A former British Legion building in the heart of King’s Lynn, refurbished and extended to create premium residential apartments. The building needed modernising for today’s market while keeping the character that made it worth saving in the first place.

The Challenge

The existing building was never designed to carry an additional storey of traditional masonry construction. A live refurbishment and a new extension also don’t run as two separate projects, they had to be sequenced as one, on a site with the public walking past it every day.

The Delivery

A structural survey was commissioned before any design work was finalised, rather than trusting the original drawings. The new storey was engineered in lightweight timber frame instead of masonry, keeping the additional load within what the existing structure could actually bear. Refurbishment of the existing floors continued while the new storey was framed and closed in above, run as one coordinated programme rather than two sequential ones, with clear physical segregation between the public areas and the construction zone throughout.

The Outcome

A refurbished and extended building delivering premium residential apartments in the centre of King’s Lynn, completed without the disruption to the town centre that a less coordinated programme would have caused.