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

15 Fountain Street, Londonderry

This is a mid-terrace, two-storey, two-bay Victorian townhouse built in 1883, forming part of a stepped terrace of fourteen similar houses lining the north-west side of Fountain Street. 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 building is recorded but does not meet the criteria for listing, as little original historic fabric survives, though it carries group value alongside Nos. 9–35 Fountain Street and falls within the Historic City Conservation Area.

Architectural Description

The house is rectangular in plan with a projecting single-storey rear return covered by a flat felted roof. The principal elevation faces south-east onto Fountain Street, set back at the pavement edge and overlooking former industrial buildings on the opposite side of the street. The main roof is pitched and finished in fibre cement with black ridge tiles and a rooflight to the north-east side (left-hand side) at the rear. A large red brick chimney stack rises from the north-east side, centred on the ridge, carrying six clay pots with lead caps. Below the projecting red brick course is a contrasting black brick course, with a further black band three courses below that.

The south-east (principal) elevation is laid in English Garden Wall brick bond using red brick, with Victorian industrial brickwork dressings in a contrasting colour — a decorative style described as reflecting the Victorian taste for polychromatic brickwork derived from the Venetian Gothic. There is an ornamental projecting brick cornice at eaves level, with a double band of black brick dressings below it. Continuous decorative brick stringcourses in contrasting black run at ground and first floor levels at both sill and head heights, with a further row of black brick separated by three courses of red above the sill and below the head level on each floor.

On the ground floor there is one segmental arch-headed window opening; the first floor has two segmental arch-headed window openings. All window openings are currently fitted with uPVC casements with painted sills. The entrance door opening is segmental arch-headed, raised one step up from the pavement, and fitted with a non-original painted four-panel timber door with a plain segmental-headed fanlight above. All openings have red brick voussoirs to their heads, with three black bricks at the centre forming a keystoned detail.

The north-east and south-west sides of the house abut the adjoining properties at No. 13 and No. 17 Fountain Street respectively. The north-west (rear) elevation is finished in painted render. The fenestration to the rear is irregular, with uPVC casement windows; those to the south-west side of the rear elevation are set at half-landing height. The single-storey rear return contains the kitchen and bathroom, with uPVC windows to the north-east side. The rear yard has been enclosed with a clear polycarbonate corrugated mono-pitch roof. Rainwater goods to the front (south-east) elevation are cast aluminium guttering with circular downpipes; uPVC goods are used to the rear (north-west).

Historical Context

Fountain Street is one of the earliest streets to have been developed outside the walled city of Londonderry. According to architectural 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, by those willing to settle outside the walls — though originally only on the side of the street away from the walls, which would have been kept clear for defence. The street had acquired the name 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 at Bishop Street. The Annual Revisions indicate that the earlier terrace on this stretch, 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 two-storey, two-bay terrace in 1883. The new terrace was leased by Hamilton Graham until his death in 1892 and was occupied by working-class labourers, the majority of whom worked in neighbouring factories and local industries — many undoubtedly employed at the Welch Margetson Shirt Factory on the opposite side of the street.

Historical records for No. 11 Fountain Street — one of the comparable houses in the same terrace — give a sense of the social history of these dwellings. The first recorded occupant was James McGonigle, a bank messenger whose wife and daughter were machinists in a local factory. The 1901 census described No. 11 as a second-class dwelling with six rooms and a coal house as its sole outbuilding, valued at £8 following completion of the terrace. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) its value was raised to £12; the valuer recorded it as occupied by a Mr. Robert Greer in the 1930s and noted that it was 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 further raised in value to £15 and 10 shillings.

The flat-roofed rear return was added to the rear of No. 11 in the late 20th century, and a similar addition is present at No. 15.

In the 1970s, the stretch of Fountain Street extending from Hawkin Street to Bishop Street was demolished and the area redeveloped as a modern housing estate. As Calley records, this clearance 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. Nos. 11–35 Fountain Street are among only a small number of terraces to have survived this late 20th-century redevelopment and represent a remnant of the once-strong industrial working-class character of the Fountain area, which supplied much of the labour for Londonderry's shirt-making and shipbuilding industries during the prosperous late Victorian period. The terrace was included within the Historic City Conservation Area in 2006.