Presbyterian Church, 34 Altmore Street, Glemarm, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 0AR

Presbyterian Church, 34 Altmore Street, Glenarm

This is a relatively plain, single-storey Presbyterian church of 1835, finished in painted lined render with a hipped roof and a symmetrical west-facing front elevation. It sits slightly set back from the building line within the terrace on the west side of Altmore Street, and has a church hall adjoining its east side.

Exterior

To the centre of the west elevation projects a small gabled porch with in-and-out quoins at its corners and a slightly overhanging plain verge. The south face of this porch has a plain timber sheeted door set within a plain flat-arched opening. The west face carries a pointed arch headed window with astragals forming 'Y' tracery to the upper portion, a ventilation hopper to the centre, and two plain panes to the lower section; this window is surmounted by a pointed arch moulded dripstone with label stops. To the left and right of the porch on the main building face are two further gothic-arched windows of the same design.

The north elevation has two tall pointed arch windows with stained glass. To the left of this elevation is the blank gable of the church hall.

The south elevation has a small two-over-two sash window set at a high level to the left. To the centre projects a tall gabled porch. The west face of this south porch has a plain timber sheeted door with a shallow pointed arch headed fanlight with 'Y' tracery. The south face of this porch merges into a flat-roofed section forming a link block connecting to the church hall. To the left of this link section are three pointed arch headed windows; to the right of these is a plain door, and to the far right is a small square window.

The east face of the church proper looks onto a narrow light well. It has a central roundel with margins, flanked by a gothic arch headed window on either side. The east elevation of the rear hall section has a small window opening with a modern frame to its left side, a large recently built flat-roofed extension to its right, and a small two-over-two sash window at the far right.

Materials and details

The main church is finished in painted lined render; the hall to the rear is in unpainted roughcast. The pitched roofs are covered with natural slate. Cast iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout. To the front of the church is a low rendered wall topped with iron railings featuring decorative cast iron heads in a fleur-de-lis-like pattern, which appear to date from the late 19th or early 20th century.

Historical context

Altmore Street takes its name from the Altmore River, a narrow brook flowing from high ground to the south-east down to the Glenarm River to the west. The earliest documentary reference to building plots in this vicinity dates from a lease of August 1673, with further leases from December 1678 referring to tenements on the south side of Altmore and mentioning the presence of a street. The earliest surviving map of Glenarm, drawn by John O'Hara in 1779, shows the street fully developed on both sides.

The construction of the Town Gate to the Glenarm Castle estate, sometime between 1832 and 1857, appears to have prompted significant changes to the street's layout. The eastern terrace was pushed further eastwards to allow a broader approach to the estate. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1835 note that some two-storey houses of a tolerable description had recently been built in Glenarm for the accommodation of lodgers during the bathing season, consistent with this period of redevelopment. The western side of the street, where the church stands, appears to have been less affected by these changes, though some properties at its southern end were cleared when the Town Gate was constructed.

The Presbyterian congregation of Glenarm, like many others in Ireland, split into subscribing and non-subscribing factions in the wake of the Arian controversy of the late 1820s. The non-subscribing majority retained possession of the existing church building, leaving the orthodox minority to find alternative accommodation. Felix McKillop's 1987 history of Glenarm records that following the 1829 split the minority congregation was forced to worship in the open air for a number of years, and later in local houses and barns, after the local magistrate Thomas Davidson refused them the use of the court and market house. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1835 offer a slightly different account, stating that the congregation was at that time using the courtroom itself as a place of worship. Whatever the precise circumstances, by the summer of 1833 the congregation had secured a site on the east side of Altmore Street and begun building a new church. The building opened in July 1835. Following the 1859 Revival, attendance grew to such an extent that a new congregation had to be formed, and a further church was built in 1862 at Carnalbanagh, a townland some miles to the west of Glenarm.