Former Officers Quarters And Mess, Fulwood Barracks

Officers' quarters and a mess, dating from 1842-1848, were designed by Major T Foster RE for the Ordnance Board. The building is now offices and a mess. Constructed from rock-faced sandstone ashlar with ashlar cross-axial ridge stacks and a slate roof, it is in a late Georgian style. The building has a single-depth plan with a double-depth first floor, and projecting end messes.

The exterior features an 6:28:6-window range, with symmetrical elevations and coped end gables. The middle section is divided into five 5-window sections, with central doorways, and a left-hand 3-window section with a right-hand doorway. The end mess blocks project and have gable-end porches. Doorways have plain surrounds, overlights with margin panes and diagonal glazing bars, and mid-20th century doors. Most windows are late 20th-century casements with 6/6 panes, although some original 6/6-pane sash windows remain. End gables include a porch with clasping pilasters, a cornice, and a blocking course, leading to a round-arched doorway with pilaster jambs, an architrave, radial fanlight, and late 20th-century panelled doors. A 6/6-pane sash window is located in the end return, and above it is an oculus. The right-hand porch features a painted diagram of Angelo's sword drill. The rear elevation has doorways lacking overlights.

Inside, the front entrance stair halls are divided by screens with radial fanlights and panelled pilaster jambs, leading to dogleg stairs with turned balusters, a wreathed rail, and a curtail. The left-hand end of the building contains a lobby and a large mess room with two fireplaces. A basement features an axial corridor.

Original iron basement area railings, attached to dwarf walls with diagonal bars, exist at the front and rear, and also enclose the steps leading to the entrances and down to the basement.

Historically, the building originally housed servants' accommodation in the basement and officers on the first floor. It forms the central dividing range between the former infantry and cavalry parade grounds. The barracks were constructed in response to concerns about Chartist agitation. Despite the loss of the south-east barrack range, the original barracks plan, consisting of two parade squares within a defensible perimeter wall, remains substantially intact, making Fulwood the most complete surviving example in England of late 18th-century barracks design.