23 Fountain Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 6QX

23 Fountain Street is a mid-terrace, two-storey, two-bay polychromatic brick townhouse with an attic, built around 1883 to an unknown architect's design. It forms part of a uniform stepped terrace of fourteen similar houses lining the north-west side of Fountain Street, located just outside and backing onto the historic city walls of Londonderry, between New Gate and Ferry Quay Gate, and to the east of St Columb's Cathedral. The terrace sits within the Historic City Conservation Area. The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting single-storey flat-roofed rear return.

The principal south-east elevation faces onto Fountain Street, set back to the pavement line and overlooking former industrial buildings on the opposite side of the street. It is built in English Garden Wall brick bond with Victorian brickwork dressings in contrasting colours. There is a single segmental arch-headed window opening on the ground floor and two on the first floor, along with a segmental arch-headed entrance door opening at pavement level fitted with a four-panel painted timber front door and a plain segmental-headed fanlight above. All openings have red brick voussoirs to the heads, with three black bricks at the centre forming a keystone detail. Continuous decorative stringcourses in contrasting black brick run at sill and head level on both the ground and first floors, with a further row of black brick separated by three courses of red above sill level and below head level. An ornamental projecting brick cornice at eaves level is finished with a double band of black brick dressings below it. Ground and first floor windows are one-over-one timber sliding sash windows. First floor window sills have a painted finish; the ground floor sill is a concrete replacement.

The rear north-west elevation is of painted rendered finish, with unpainted render to the single-storey flat-roofed extension to the right. Both ground and first floor rear windows are one-over-one timber sliding sash windows, with uPVC windows fitted to the rear return. The north-east and south-west sides abut the adjoining properties at numbers 21 and 25 Fountain Street respectively.

The roof is a pitched natural slate roof with rooflight openings to both the front and rear slopes. Black ridge tiles run along the main roof ridge. A double red brick chimney stack rises from the north-east side, centred on the ridge, with six clay pots. The chimney is detailed with double bands of black brick below a double projecting brick course. Rainwater goods to both front and rear are uPVC half-round gutters on drive-through brackets.

The terrace has a notable historical background. Fountain Street is one of the earliest streets to have been developed outside the walled city. According to historian D. Calley, houses on this site were depicted on maps as early as 1685, and the street may have been developed almost immediately after the city walls were built, initially only on the side of the street away from the walls, which would have been kept clear for defence purposes. The street was named Fountain Street by the 1830s, in reference to a fountain located next to Church Bastion. The 1848–49 Ordnance Survey Town Plan and the circa 1873–1910 Annual Revisions map show that Fountain Street originally extended from Ferryquay Street around the city walls before terminating on Bishop Street.

The current terrace replaced an earlier row of irregular-sized buildings that were leased by Hamilton Graham, a local bookkeeper who resided on the Northland Road. That earlier row was demolished in 1883 and replaced with the present uniform terrace. The terrace continued to be leased by Hamilton Graham until his death in 1892, and was occupied by working-class labourers, the majority of whom were employed in the neighbouring factories and local industries, many undoubtedly working at the Welch Margetson Shirt Factory on the opposite side of the street. Calley described the terrace as a stepped row of two-storey, two-bay houses of red brick with black brick stringcourses and keystones, segmental-headed openings, and bold decorative brick roof cornices. The Conservation Area Design Guide noted that the terrace displays the Victorian taste for polychrome brickwork derived from the Venetian Gothic.

The first recorded occupant of number 11 in the terrace (whose valuation records form the basis of the historical account applied to the row as a whole) was James McGonigle, a bank messenger whose wife and daughter worked as machinists in a local factory. The 1901 census described that house as a second-class dwelling consisting of six rooms with a coal house as its sole outbuilding, valued at £8 at completion. By the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the value had risen to £12, with the property at that time occupied by a Mr Robert Greer and subsequently purchased in 1945 by the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy on Pump Street. Under the Second Revaluation (1956–72), the house was occupied by a Mr A. Shields and had been further raised in value to £15 and 10 shillings. The flat-roofed rear return was added to the terrace in the late 20th century.

In the 1970s, the stretch of Fountain Street extending from Hawkin Street to Bishop Street was demolished and redeveloped with a modern housing estate. Calley records that this demolition obliterated an entire neighbourhood, including Albert Street and Place, Fountain Place, Victoria Street, Clarence Place, one side of Kennedy Street, and all but a single tower of the City Gaol. Numbers 11 to 35 Fountain Street are among only a small number of terraces to have survived this redevelopment, and they represent a remnant of the once strong industrial working-class character of the Fountain area, which supplied workers to the local shirt-making and shipbuilding industries during Londonderry's prosperous late Victorian period. The terrace was included in the Historic City Conservation Area in 2006. Number 23 shares group value with numbers 9 to 35 Fountain Street but does not meet the criteria for individual listing.