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

19 Fountain Street, Londonderry

This is a mid-terrace, two-storey, two-bay townhouse with attic, built in red brick with polychromatic brick detailing around 1883. It forms 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, situated between New Gate and Ferry Quay Gate and to the east of St Columb's Cathedral. The house is rectangular on plan with a projecting two-storey rear return with a pitched roof. It is privately owned and falls within the Historic City Conservation Area, though it retains insufficient original fabric to meet the criteria for formal listing. Its significance is primarily as part of the group formed by Nos. 9–35 Fountain Street.

Architecture and Exterior

The principal elevation faces south-east onto Fountain Street, overlooking former industrial buildings on the opposite side of the street, and is set at the back of the pavement. It is built in English Garden Wall brick bond, partially repointed, with Victorian industrial brickwork dressings in a contrasting colour. At eaves level there is an ornamental projecting brick cornice with a double band of black brick dressings below. Continuous decorative brick stringcourses in contrasting black run at ground and first floor levels, both at sill and head height, with a further row of black brick separated by three courses of red brick above sill and below head level.

There is a single segmental arch-headed window opening on the ground floor and two on the first floor. The entrance door opening is segmental arch-headed, level with the pavement, and contains a six-panel painted timber front door with a plain segmental-headed fanlight above. All openings have red brick voussoirs to their heads, with three black bricks to the centre forming a keystone detail. Ground and first floor windows are one-over-one timber sliding sash. All sills have a painted finish over stone.

The north-east and south-west sides are abutted by the adjoining properties at No. 17 and No. 21 Fountain Street. The north-west rear elevation is finished in painted render. The two-storey pitched roof return sits to the right of this elevation, with a single-storey flat-roofed extension behind it. There is a single timber sliding sash window at both ground and first floor levels on the exposed section of the rear elevation. A two-storey extension has been constructed in painted fair-faced blockwork with a uPVC casement window to the north-west gable.

The roof is finished in fibre cement with black ridge tiles to the main roof and a rooflight at the rear on the north-east side. A large red brick chimney stack rises from the north-east side, centred on the ridge, with six clay pots and a double band of black brick below a projecting decorative brick course. Cast iron guttering serves the front south-east elevation; cast aluminium guttering serves the rear north-west elevation, with uPVC to the return.

The south-east boundary is formed by the historic city walls.

Historical Context

Fountain Street is one of the earliest streets to have been developed outside Londonderry's walled city. According to architectural historian D. Calley, houses on this site were depicted on maps as early as 1685, and the street may have been settled almost immediately after the walls were built, originally only on the side of the street away from the walls, which would have been kept clear for defence. The street took its name, recorded by the 1830s, from a fountain located next to Church Bastion.

The 1848–49 Ordnance Survey Town Plan and the late 19th century Annual Revisions maps show that Fountain Street originally extended from Ferryquay Street around the city walls before terminating on Bishop Street. The records suggest that the previous terrace on this stretch, between Ferryquay Street and Hawkin Street, comprised a number of irregularly 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 terrace continued to be leased by Hamilton Graham, who died in 1892, and was occupied by working-class labourers, the majority of whom were employed in the neighbouring factories and local industries — many undoubtedly in the Welch Margetson Shirt Factory on the opposite side of the street.

Calley describes 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 of 2012 noted that the terrace displays the Victorian taste for polychromatic brickwork derived from the Venetian Gothic.

The first recorded occupant of No. 11 Fountain Street — representative of the wider terrace's early history — 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 of six rooms with a coal house as its sole outbuilding, valued at £8. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) its value was raised to £12, and under the Second Revaluation (1956–72) further raised to £15 and 10 shillings.

In 1970 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to Londonderry described Fountain Street in these 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. Calley records that 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 that survived this redevelopment, and they remain a remnant of the once strong industrial working-class character of the Fountain area, which provided workers for 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.