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

13 Fountain Street is a mid-terrace, two-storey, two-bay Victorian townhouse built in 1883 as part of a uniform stepped terrace of fourteen similar houses lining the north-west side of Fountain Street, 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 architect is unknown. The house is rectangular on plan with a projecting single-storey rear return with a pitched fibre cement roof. The principal elevation faces south-east onto Fountain Street, overlooking former industrial buildings on the opposite side of the street, and is set back at the pavement edge beneath a natural slate pitched roof.

The south-east elevation is built in English Garden Wall brick bond using red brick with contrasting Victorian polychromatic brick dressings. An ornamental projecting brick cornice runs at eaves level, beneath which is a double band of black brick dressings. Continuous decorative stringcourses in contrasting black brick occur at both ground and first floor levels, at sill and head height, with an additional row of black brick separated by three courses of red brick above sill level and below head level. There is one segmental arch-headed window opening on the ground floor and two at first floor level. The entrance door opening is also segmental arch-headed, set one step up from the pavement, and has a non-original painted six-panel timber door with a plain segmental-headed fanlight above. All window and door openings have red brick voussoirs to their heads with three black bricks at the centre forming a keystone detail. Ground and first floor windows are four-over-four timber sliding sash. All sills have a painted finish.

The north-east and south-west sides are abutted by the adjoining properties at numbers 11 and 15 Fountain Street. The north-west rear elevation is of painted rendered finish. The fenestration pattern to the rear is irregular, with four-over-four and two-over-two timber sliding sash windows; those to the south-west side of the rear elevation are set at half-landing height. There is a small roof light at the rear to the north-east. The main roof is finished with black ridge tiles and natural slate. The rear return has black ridge tiles and fibre cement tiles. A large red brick chimney stack rises from the north-east side, centred on the ridge, with six clay pots. The stack features a contrasting black brick course below a projecting angled saw-tooth red brick course, with a further black band three courses below. Cast aluminium guttering and circular downpipes are fitted to both the front south-east and rear north-west elevations.

Number 13 has retained its original character to both the front and rear elevations, including its timber sliding sash windows, and contributes to the group value of numbers 9 to 35 Fountain Street. However, it is not considered to be among the best examples of its type and has not been assessed as being of special architectural or historic interest in its own right.

Fountain Street is one of the earliest streets to have been developed outside the walled city. Historical sources record that houses on the 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 them, though originally only on the side of the street away from the walls, which would have been kept clear for defensive purposes. The street took 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 maps record that Fountain Street originally extended from Ferryquay Street around the city walls before terminating on Bishop Street. The Annual Revisions indicate that the previous terrace on the site, located 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 and who died in 1892. This earlier row was demolished and replaced with the current uniform terrace in 1883. The terrace continued to be leased by Hamilton Graham 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.

Following the completion of the terrace, number 11 Fountain Street was valued at £8 in the Annual Revisions. The 1901 census described it as a second-class dwelling comprising six rooms with a coal house as its sole outbuilding, and the first recorded occupant was James McGonigle, a bank messenger whose wife and daughter were machinists in a local factory. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland covering 1936 to 1957, the value was raised to £12. Valuers noted that the property was occupied by a Mr Robert Greer in the 1930s and was purchased by the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy on Pump Street in 1945. Under the Second Revaluation covering 1956 to 1972, the house was occupied by a Mr A. Shields and had been further raised in value to £15 and 10 shillings.

The 1970 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide for 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 the area redeveloped with a modern housing estate, resulting in the loss of 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 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 within the Historic City Conservation Area in 2006. The Conservation Area Design Guide noted that the terrace on Fountain Street "displays the Victorian taste for polychrome brickwork derived from the Venetian Gothic."