Inniskilling Fusiliers Memorial, (aka Boer War Memorial and Inniskilling South African War Memorial), Drumragh Avenue, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, BT78

Inniskilling Fusiliers Memorial

A freestanding granite sculptural memorial built circa 1904 to designs by Sydney March, commemorating the men of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers who fell in the Boer War between 1899 and 1902. The memorial was originally unveiled on Omagh High Street on 24 November 1904 by the Duchess of Abercorn, and was relocated to its present location on Drumragh Avenue in the 1970s due to traffic management considerations.

The memorial consists of grey granite and employs a tripartite arrangement of plinth blocks supporting full-height bronze allegorical figurative sculptures. The principal south-facing elevation features a central splayed plinth block supporting a standing allegorical figure of Victory holding a laurel wreath, flanked by two setback diminished plinths supporting squatting bronze figures. The central plinth is topped with a cavetto moulded apex. Each plinth is affixed with bronze panels embossed with names, with the central panel surmounted by a separate bronze cartouche of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers standard. These panels rest above a tapered dressed plinth over a chamfered rock-faced plinth base. The flanking plinth blocks on the west and east elevations are fitted with low-relief bronze panels depicting a soldier in period uniform of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The rear north elevation mirrors the principal elevation but without panels on the flanking plinth blocks.

The sculptures and low-relief brass panels, cast by Elkington & Co., display excellent early twentieth-century craftsmanship. The memorial is finished with granite coping and is constructed entirely in granite.

The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers was an Irish infantry regiment of the British Army, formed in 1881, which recruited primarily from the counties of Donegal, Londonderry, Tyrone, and Fermanagh, with its garrison depot located at Omagh. The regiment saw service in the South African War, the First World War, and the Second World War before being amalgamated into the Royal Irish Rangers in 1968.

The memorial currently sits to the north side of Drumragh Avenue, with mature trees to east and west, the Omagh bus station and County Tyrone War Memorial nearby to the southeast, and parking to the north. Although relocated from its original prominent site in front of the courthouse, it retains its character and quality as an elegant commemorative monument.