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

33 Fountain Street is a modest mid-terrace two-storey, two-bay Victorian house built in 1883, forming part of a uniform row of fourteen similar properties lining the north-west side of Fountain Street, Londonderry. The street sits just outside and backing onto the historic city walls, between New Gate and Ferry Quay Gate, to the east of St Columb's Cathedral. The property has group value with Nos. 9–35 Fountain Street and falls within the Historic City Conservation Area, though it retains insufficient individual architectural detail to be of special interest in its own right.

No. 33 is distinctive within the terrace for its cranked plan form, which arises from its position at the bend in Fountain Street. The principal south-east elevation faces onto Fountain Street and is built in English Garden Wall brick bond with polychromatic Victorian brickwork dressings in a contrasting colour. Key decorative features include an ornamental projecting brick cornice at eaves level with a double band of black brick below, and continuous decorative brick stringcourses in contrasting black running along both ground and first floor levels at sill and head heights, with a further row of black brick separated by three courses of red brick above sill and below head on each floor. There are a pair of segmental arch-headed window openings on the ground floor and two on the first floor — one to each facet of the cranked facade — with all openings having red brick voussoirs to the heads and three black bricks at the centre forming a keystonedetail. All sills are stone with a painted finish. A single pitched roof dormer sits above the first-floor windows. The entrance door opening is also segmental arch-headed. At the time of survey all openings were boarded, with graphic panels depicting a six-panel door and windows applied to the boards.

The roof is pitched and finished in fibre cement tiles with black ridge tiles, partially patched with timber sheet boarding at the time of survey. A large red brick chimney stack rises from the north-east side, centred on the ridge, with six clay pots, a double band of black brick below a projecting decorative brick course, and render above the projection. Rainwater goods to the front south-east elevation are uPVC on drive-through brackets; rainwater goods to the rear north-west elevation were missing at the time of survey.

The north-east and south-west sides are abutted by the adjoining properties Nos. 31 and 35 Fountain Street, both of which were also vacant at the time of survey. The rear north-west elevation is finished in painted render and has a single window opening to the ground floor and a pair of windows to the first floor, all boarded at the time of survey. A single pitched roof dormer to the rear on the north-east side carries a panel depicting a paired window. A single-storey flat-roofed extension projects from the rear of the property, though this was partially missing at the time of survey. The south-east boundary of the rear yard is formed by the historic city walls.

The terrace as a whole represents a significant piece of Londonderry's late Victorian urban history. Fountain Street is one of the earliest streets to have been developed outside the walled city, with houses recorded on the site on maps as early as 1685. According to architectural historian D. Calley, 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 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 map show that Fountain Street originally extended from Ferryquay Street around the city walls before terminating on Bishop Street.

The previous terrace on the site 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. The rebuilt terrace continued to be leased by Hamilton Graham until his death in 1892, and was occupied by working-class labourers, the majority of whom worked in the neighbouring factories and local industries — many undoubtedly employed at the Welch Margetson Shirt Factory on the opposite side of the street. Calley described the new terrace as a "stepped terrace of two-storey, two-bay houses of red-brick with black brick stringcourses and keystones, with 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."

In 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. As Calley records, this demolition also obliterated 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, and remain a remnant of the once-strong industrial working-class character of the Fountain area. The terrace was included within the Historic City Conservation Area in 2006.