26 Toberwine Street, Glenarm, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 0AP

26 Toberwine Street is the southern apartment within a large three-storey terraced building dating from around 1865 to 1870, situated on the east side of Toberwine Street in Glenarm. The building contains two shops at ground floor level with two apartments above, and has been extensively altered; it is not considered to be of special architectural interest. It was delisted on 23 January 2006, though it remains within a conservation area.

The front façade faces roughly west, is symmetrical, and is finished in painted render with in-and-out quoins. At ground floor level, the two shop fronts and their associated apartment entrance doors are all set back behind a plain timber signboard with a plain projecting cornice above. To the far left is a four-panelled timber door — giving access to the first-floor apartment at no. 20 — with a tall plain fanlight with an elliptical head. To the left of this door is a narrow panelled pilaster jamb; to the right is a similar but much wider pilaster. Immediately to the right of that is the eight-pane shop door for no. 22, which has an identical fanlight. To the right of that door is a narrow pilaster matching the one on the far left, in front of which stands a slender cast iron column. To the immediate right is a plain rendered stall riser, above which is a large six-pane shop window with elliptical-headed upper panes. A relatively recent wrought iron chevaux de frise sits on the window sill. A plain projecting pier divides this from the second shop front to the right, which mirrors the first but is handed and has a panelled timber shop door.

At first and second floor levels, there are four evenly spaced windows with bevelled reveals and sash frames with horizontal astragals in a two-over-two arrangement. The north and south gables rise above the two-storey buildings on either side, are blank and finished in painted render, and each terminates in a large rendered chimneystack. There is a dentilled eaves course.

To the rear, the ground floor is dominated by a large modern single-storey flat-roofed extension, which merges to the east with a shallow pitched gabled roof. This extension obscures most of the rear elevation at ground level, leaving only the extreme left side visible, where there is a modern door; there may be a further doorway to the far right, though this part of the elevation was obscured from view during inspection. At first and second floor levels the rear elevation is symmetrical, with four windows on each floor — two to the far left and two to the far right — the outermost windows being taller. All rear windows have modern frames. The rear façade is finished in unpainted roughcast. The gabled roof is slated. Cast iron rainwater goods are present.

The 1859 valuation plan annotations confirm that the building was constructed after that date, with its design suggesting a date of around the 1870s. The Ordnance Survey town plan of 1903 shows that the building already had a return at that date, but the current return is a late 20th-century replacement, probably dating from around the 1980s. In the early 1900s, and possibly earlier, no. 24 in the same building served as Glenarm's post office.

Toberwine Street — whose name translates as "Street of the Sweet Well" — is thought to represent the earliest area of settlement within the village of Glenarm. The original 13th-century castle, around which the village developed, is believed to have stood at the south-west corner of the street on the site now occupied by the former courthouse. That castle was deliberately destroyed by Sorley Boy MacDonnell in 1597 and was apparently not repaired, with his descendant Sir Randal McDonnell building a new residence on the other side of the river. Some historians suggest the old castle was occupied by tenants in the later 17th century, though Richard Dobbs makes no reference to it in his 1683 description of the village. The earliest mention of "Toberwine" in the Antrim Papers appears in a lease of November 1672 referring to a house in the area, with "Toberwine Street" itself named in a lease of August 1709. John O'Hara's 1779 map of Glenarm — the earliest surviving plan of the village — shows the street fully developed on both sides, with the market and courthouse at the south-west end. No verifiable remains of the old castle appear on that map, but the 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoirs refer to "the foundations of a very extensive old castle which stood at the centre of the town until a few years ago," suggesting some ruins may have survived into the early 19th century. The 1833 valuation evidence indicates that most buildings now visible on the west side of the street were present in some form by that date, and many were probably of 18th-century origin. The east side of the street saw considerably more development after 1833: nos. 4 to 12 date from around 1840, and nos. 20 to 34 and no. 62 were built after around 1860, with some replacing modest single-storey dwellings. The large three-storey former Antrim Arms Hotel and possibly its neighbour no. 56 may have been standing in the early 1830s, though this is not certain.