Warehousing in the UK world of business has in some respects, not changed for thousands of years. The need to store animal foods, grass & hay, then their fleece, hides and fats etc, made the earliest of mankind need to find some kind of storage system. The early cave dwellers would have kept their wares in a separate cave, protected from marauders and other undesirables. That in a way was a form of warehousing – the housing of wares. These days in the UK for example, warehousing is categorised by ownership and function. It will also be subject to the types of wares being housed. Private warehouses are company-owned and very highly computerised and controllled. Public warehousing is designed for the general public, i.e. third party individuals access to flexible solutions for short or long term safe storage from everything domestic such as complete household itinerary to just boxes of precious items that might get lost at home.
On the other hand, bonded warehouses are completely different, and are for duty-deferred goods. They are licensed specifically for storing imported gooeds which cannot be released to the buyer/s until all customs import duties and clearance paperwork has been completed and all dues paid, then the goods can be sold on or moved into free circulation.
Distribution centres focus on very streamlined receiving in of goods, sorting and shipping out to the end customers in a short term operation, very little long term storage involved. Fulfillment cetres are similarly organised but tend to service the now huge e-commerce and offer storage, picking and packing with dedicated dispatch in a seamless service.