Building record LWT 543 - Lowestoft War Memorial Museum.

The museum building was built in 1940-41 as an extension to Sparrow's Nest House, and served as the headquarters and administrative offices of the Royal Navy Patrol Service throughout the Second World War. Sparrow's Nest House was built c.1830 by Robert Sparrow of Worlingham Hall, founder of the Lowestoft Lifeboat Society. The house and estate were purchased by the Lowestoft Corporation in 1897, and were taken over by the Royal Navy in 1939. The main house was demolished in 1963, but the extensions built by the Royal Navy were retained. These included some walls of the original Sparrows Nest House against which the extensions had been erected. The surviving buildings were leased by the corporation to Mr Jack Rose, the founder of the War Memorial Museum in 1964, and the building continues to operate as a museum within the public recreational grounds created from the gardens of The former Sparrow's Nest House.

The museum is situated to the rear of a range of buildings which presently form part of the recreational facilities within the former buildings. It is a flat-roofed two storey building of painted brick, with shuttered ground floor window openings and three-light metal framed upper floor windows. It is presently painted in camouflaged style, presumably replicating its wartime appearance. It is attached to the main range of buildings at its south-west corner, the junction formed at part of one of the surviving walls of the now-demolished Sparrows Nest House. This incorporates three shallow pointed arch-headed openings and a balcony. The remaining part of this wall extends westwards and incorporates fragments of brick and flint wall surfaces.

In this instance, the retention as a museum of a wartime building incorporating fragments of a now demolished small country house has local resonance, but is not of sufficient special interest in a national context to justify a listing recommendation. (1)