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

25 Fountain Street is a modest Victorian mid-terrace townhouse built in 1883, forming part of a stepped terrace of fourteen similar two-storey, two-bay red-brick houses lining the north-west side of Fountain Street, Londonderry. The terrace sits just outside and immediately backing onto the historic city walls, between New Gate and Ferry Quay Gate, and to the east of St Columb's Cathedral. The house is recorded but not listed, though it carries group value as part of Nos. 9–35 Fountain Street and falls within the Historic City Conservation Area. It is considered to have insufficient surviving original historic fabric to merit formal listing in its own right.

The building is rectangular on plan, with a small single-storey flat-roofed rear return added in the late 20th century. It is described as a polychromatic brick townhouse — that is, one using brickwork in contrasting colours in a decorative manner — a style the Conservation Area Design Guide linked to the Victorian taste for polychrome brickwork derived from the Venetian Gothic.

The principal south-east elevation faces onto Fountain Street and is set back to the pavement edge, overlooking former industrial buildings on the opposite side of the street. It is built in English Garden Wall brick bond with Victorian industrial brickwork dressings in contrasting colour. At eaves level there is an ornamental projecting brick cornice with a double band of black brick dressings below it. Continuous decorative brick stringcourses in contrasting black brick run along both the ground and first floors at sill and head level, with a further row of black brick separated by three courses of red both above the sill and below the head level. All window and door openings have red brick voussoirs to their heads with three black bricks at the centre forming a keystone detail. There is a single segmental arch-headed window opening on the ground floor and two on the first floor. The entrance door opening is also segmental arch-headed, raised one step up from the pavement, and fitted with a four-panel painted timber front door with a plain segmental-headed fanlight above. Ground and first floor windows are 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows. All sills have a painted finish.

The north-east and south-west sides of the house are abutted by the adjoining terrace houses at No. 23 and No. 27 Fountain Street respectively. The rear north-west elevation is finished in painted render, as is the single-storey flat-roofed return extension, which has a rooflight and abuts the historic city walls directly. The rear elevation has single 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows at ground, first, and attic floor levels, along with double doors to the kitchen facing south-west. The north-west boundary of the yard is formed by the historic city walls themselves.

The roof is a pitched natural slate roof with black ridge tiles. A pair of conservation-type rooflights are set to the front south-east slope, and a single conservation rooflight to the rear north-west slope. A large red-brick chimney stack rises from the north-east side, centred on the ridge, with six clay pots, five of which have vented caps. The stack has double bands of black brick below a double projecting brick course, below a rendered capping. Rainwater goods are cast aluminium to the front and half-round uPVC on drive-through brackets to the rear.

No. 25 has retained a number of original external features, including its 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows and natural slate roof, which are consistent with its date and building type.

Fountain Street is one of the earliest streets to have been developed outside Londonderry's walled city. Historical research by Calley indicates that houses on this site were depicted on maps as early as 1685, and that the street may have been developed almost immediately after the city walls were built, initially only on the side away from the walls, which would have been kept clear for defence. The street had acquired its current name by the 1830s, in reference to a fountain located next to Church Bastion.

The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1848–49 and the Annual Revisions maps of circa 1873–1910 record that Fountain Street originally extended from Ferryquay Street around the city walls before terminating on Bishop Street. The earlier terrace on this site — between Ferryquay Street and Hawkin Street — comprised a number of irregular-sized buildings leased by Hamilton Graham, a local bookkeeper who resided on the Northland Road. This earlier row was demolished and replaced with the current uniform terrace in 1883. Hamilton Graham continued to lease the terrace until his death in 1892. The houses were occupied by working-class labourers, the majority of whom worked in neighbouring factories and local industries, with many undoubtedly employed by the Welch Margetson Shirt Factory on the opposite side of the street.

Historical records relating to No. 11 Fountain Street (the best-documented house in the terrace) provide useful context for the whole row. Following completion, No. 11 was valued at £8. Its first recorded occupant was James McGonigle, a bank messenger whose wife and daughter were machinists in a local factory. The 1901 census described it as a second-class dwelling of six rooms with a coal house as its sole outbuilding. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the value rose to £12; the house was occupied by a Mr Robert Greer in the 1930s and purchased by the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy on Pump Street in 1945. Under the Second Revaluation (1956–72) it was occupied by a Mr A. Shields and valued at £15 and 10 shillings.

The 1970 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to Londonderry described Fountain Street in the following terms: "The relatively narrow streets, the two-storey brick houses, the stepped roofs and the small domestic scale of the dwellings and the streets are typical of the environment." During the 1970s, the stretch of Fountain Street extending from Hawkin Street to Bishop Street was demolished and redeveloped as a modern housing estate. Along with it, an entire neighbourhood was lost, 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. Nos. 11–35 Fountain Street are among only a small number of terraces to have survived this redevelopment. The terrace is a remnant of the once strong industrial working-class character of the Fountain area, which provided workers for Londonderry's shirt-making and shipbuilding industries during the city's prosperous late Victorian period. The terrace was included in the Historic City Conservation Area in 2006.