10 Altmore Street, Glenarm, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 0AR

10 Altmore Street, Glenarm

This is a large, two-storey terraced building, originally constructed around 1835–40 as a guest house, and now in use as a hotel. It sits on the east side of Altmore Street in Glenarm, County Antrim, and retains a double-fronted late Victorian shop front, likely dating from the 1880s, at ground floor level. The building has three two-storey rear returns of varying sizes, and despite some unsympathetic later alterations, retains sufficient period character to justify its B1 listing grade.

Front Elevation

The front, west-facing elevation is asymmetrical. At ground floor level, the late Victorian shop front has double timber panelled entrance doors positioned centre-right, framed by simple timber pilasters with a fanlight containing four small semicircular arch-headed panes. To either side of the entrance are large shop windows, each with four semicircular arch-headed lights and framed at the outer edges by matching pilasters. The stall riser has been covered in 'crazy paving' stone facing, applied around the 1970s or 1980s. To the far left of the ground floor is a panelled timber door with a three-pane fanlight (also with semicircular arch heads), and between this door and the main shop front there is a vertical panel clad in the same recent stone facing. Across the full width of the ground floor, above the shop front and the side door, runs a painted signboard set below a simple projecting timber cornice. Between the cornice and the signboard is a row of vertical slots, probably for ventilation.

At first floor level are three slightly unevenly spaced sash windows with Georgian-glazed panes in a 6-over-6 arrangement. The first floor façade is finished in painted dry dash render. Plain painted quoins mark each end of the elevation.

Rear Elevation and Returns

The rear, east-facing elevation is almost entirely obscured by three gabled two-storey returns of differing depths. The northernmost return is approximately 18 metres long; the central return is approximately 2 metres deep; and the southern return is approximately 8 metres deep. All the walls to the returns are covered in roughly finished painted render.

The north return's east gable and north face are both blank. Its south face has a door to the far left, followed to the right by a small rectangular glazed bay with white glazed brick piers and a glazed lean-to roof. Further right is a panelled door with a plain fanlight and moulded door surround, then a plain sash window, then a half-glazed door, another plain sash window, and to the far right a large square-headed opening. At first floor level on this face are three roughly evenly spaced sash windows with Georgian panes in a 6-over-3 arrangement. The north return's gabled roof is covered in natural slate and carries two quite tall rendered chimneystacks at the ridge.

The central return is wedged between the north and south returns, so its north and south faces are concealed. Its east face has a large modern first floor window at centre. At ground floor level, to the left side, an open passageway leads to a panelled door.

The south return's north face has a door opening to the right of the ground floor and is otherwise blank. Its east, gabled face has a wide ground floor door opening with a sheeted door and sheeted side panel to the right, and a sash window with Georgian panes (6-over-3) to the right of the first floor. The south face of this return has a small ground floor window to the left and a half-glazed door to the right; at first floor level there is a small window to the left of centre. The gabled roof to this return is covered in natural slate and carries a rendered chimneystack to each side of the ridge and a further chimneystack to the left of centre; all three have mouldings, but only the left-hand stack has chimney pots, of which there are two, and they do not match.

Set into the rear of the main roof are two cast iron skylights. Behind the building is an enclosed yard, which is linked to the yards of Nos 8 and 10a Altmore Street and accessed via the coach arch to No. 10a.

Historical Context

Altmore Street takes its name from the Altmore River, a narrow brook flowing from the high ground to the south-east down to the Glenarm River to the west. Documentary evidence for building plots in the area dates back to at least August 1673, when a lease from Alexander MacDonnell of Glenarm refers to a 'housestead, garden of tenement…extending back to Altmore Brook'. Further leases of December 1678 refer to 'tenements' on the 'south side of Altmore' and mention a 'street'. The earliest extant map of Glenarm, drawn up by John O'Hara in 1779, shows the street fully developed on both sides.

Many of the earliest houses may have stood on the western side of the street. Before the walling in of the Glenarm Castle estate grounds in the 1750s, the village fronted onto both sides of the Glenarm River, and some buildings on the western side may originally have faced the river rather than the street. The present No. 15, for instance, appears to have originally had a near-symmetrical elevation facing the river and a markedly asymmetrical one facing the street, while No. 29 carries a 1739 date stone on its river-facing side.

The construction of the Town Gate, which occurred at some point between 1832 and 1857, appears to have prompted significant changes to the layout of the street. The eastern terrace was pushed further east to create a broader and slightly grander approach to the estate. No account of this widening has been found in any published history of Glenarm, but the discrepancy between the alignment of the eastern terrace on the 1832 Ordnance Survey map and that of 1857 strongly suggests it took place. An 1830 illustration of the town by T.M. Baynes, published in Ireland Illustrated (London, 1831), shows the two sections of terrace on the eastern side out of alignment and indicates that most of the houses on this side were single storey at that date. The properties recorded in the 1833 valuation of the eastern side of the street appear to bear little relation to those recorded in the 1859 valuation, suggesting wholesale demolition and rebuilding in the intervening years. The age and condition gradings applied in the 1859 valuation indicate that most of the rebuilt dwellings on this side were approximately twenty years old or slightly more at that date, placing the main phase of redevelopment in the mid to later 1830s. This is consistent with a remark in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of around 1835 that 'some two storey houses of a tolerable description have been recently built in Glenarm…intended for the accommodation of lodgers during the bathing season'.

No. 10 itself appears to correspond to a property of the same dimensions recorded on this site in the 1859 valuation, which confirms it as part of this mid to later 1830s rebuilding campaign. The 1859 valuers noted that the building then contained four rooms on the ground floor, four above, and a garret. The southern and central rear returns were already present at that date; the northern return had not yet been built. The occupant recorded in 1859 was an Archy McNeill, a grocer and baker who also worked as a building contractor and was responsible for the construction of the local Roman Catholic church in 1875. His son, Professor John (Eoin) McNeill, became a noted academic and leader of the Irish Volunteer Movement. In 1918 Eoin McNeill was elected Member of Parliament for the City of Derry, and he later served as a Free State member of the Boundary Commission, as Speaker of the Dáil, and as Minister of Education.

Given that Archy McNeill was a grocer and baker, the building is likely to have had some form of shop front from the mid-19th century onwards, and it may even have been built with one. The surviving shop front, modern stone facing aside, appears to date from the late Victorian period, probably the 1880s.