Army Recruitment Office, St. Lucia’s Barracks, Barracks Lane, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, BT78

The Army Recruitment Office at St Lucia's Barracks is a detached two-bay two-storey barracks building erected around 1900, located on the south side of the St Lucia's Barracks complex, east of Barracks Lane in Omagh. Although built after the original barracks complex, it was constructed in the same architectural style as the distinctive group it adjoins, and although altered over time, it retains original windows, doors, and fine masonry craftsmanship in a robust style.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing south, with a single-cell gabled porch to the south elevation. It has a pitched natural slate roof with clay ridge tiles, and a dressed chimneystack featuring a stringcourse and tooled stone verges on moulded kneeler stones. Cast-iron ogee-profile gutters and round cast-iron downpipes are mounted on a moulded sandstone eaves course. The walling comprises coursed squared rock-faced local limestone over a chamfered plinth course, with a moulded string course at first floor level and several flush sandstone platbands at sill and lintel heights.

Window openings are square-headed, containing 6/6 timber sash windows with chamfered sandstone surrounds and projecting stone sills. Door openings are also square-headed with sandstone surrounds and vertically-sheeted timber doors. The principal south elevation is largely obscured by the porch; the exposed section shows a variety of windows at first floor level. The porch gable contains a single window, with a single door to the left cheek; the right cheek is not accessible. The west gable has a bipartite window to each floor in the left bay and a diminished window to each floor in the right bay, with a timber louvred loop at the apex. The rear north elevation is abutted by a boundary wall extension; its exposed section is blank. The east gable is partially obscured at ground floor by a modern extension of no architectural interest; the exposed section contains two windows with a louvred loop to the apex.

The original barracks complex was built for the Royal Inniskilling Fusilier Regiment under the direction of James H. Butler, the superintending officer of the Royal Engineer Department, by contractors Messrs. Fulton of Belfast and Messrs. Colhoun Brothers of Derry. The original buildings were constructed of local limestone with Dungannon gritstone dressings, and all external walls were brick-lined as a preventative against damp. The barracks first appear on an 1882 Ordnance Survey town plan of Omagh captioned "Infantry Barracks". The Recruitment Office building does not appear until the 1906 town plan, indicating its construction around 1900 on the site of the former entrance gates to the barracks, of which part of the boundary wall still survives. The addition of this building to the barracks complex is not recorded in the relevant valuation fieldbooks.

The building occupies an elevated and imposing site within the barracks complex, which is unusual in its completeness and degree of preservation. The complex reflects an important aspect of the architectural and social heritage of Omagh and maintains strong historic links to The Royal Irish Regiment and The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The Recruitment Office forms part of an enclosed group that includes, clockwise from the block, the Officer's Mess Hall, the Waterloo and St. Lucia's Barracks Block, St. Lucia's Club, the Sergeant's Mess Hall, the Battalion Headquarters with South Africa stores, and the Guardroom.