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

25 Altmore Street is a low-proportioned, two-storey end-of-terrace house of possible pre-1832 construction, substantially altered in around the 1960s. It sits on the west side of Altmore Street, Glenarm, within a conservation area, and is in private ownership. It does not merit statutory protection and is recorded only.

The asymmetrical front elevation faces east. On the ground floor, slightly right of centre, is a recent panelled and glazed door. To its left is a large picture window with a recent modern-style frame, and to its right is a similar window. Two further similar windows sit at first-floor level. The front facade is finished in dry dash render with smooth cement bands around the openings, smooth cement quoins on the left-hand (south) side, and a smooth cement base course. The south gable is blank and rendered.

The side elevation to the left has a joined door and window arrangement on the ground floor, with a recent glazed door and recent window frame. To the right of this is a further window, with two more at first-floor level and an additional window at stair-landing level just to the right of the doorway. The rear facade is also finished in dry dash render. The roof is gabled and slated, with one small skylight to the front and two to the rear. There are two rendered chimneystacks, the northern one shared with the neighbouring property. Rainwater goods are cast iron.

Altmore Street takes its name from the Altmore River, a narrow brook that flows from high ground to the south-east down to the Glenarm River to the west. The earliest documentary reference to building plots in its vicinity occurs in a lease of August 1673, which mentions 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 the presence of a "street" is also mentioned in some of those same 1678 leases.

Many of the earliest houses in the street may have been built on the western side. Prior to the walling in of the estate grounds immediately around Glenarm Castle in the 1750s, the village fronted onto both sides of the Glenarm River, and some buildings on the western side of Altmore Street may originally have faced the river. The present no. 15, for instance, appears to have originally had an almost symmetrical rear elevation facing the river and a markedly asymmetrical front elevation facing the street. No. 29 has a 1739 date stone on its river-facing side rather than on its street-facing front. The earliest surviving map of Glenarm, drawn up by John O'Hara in 1779, shows the street fully developed on both sides, with the western terrace stretching further to the south than it does today, beyond the line of the present Town Gate to the Glenarm Castle estate.

The construction of the Town Gate sometime between 1832 and 1857 appears to have brought about radical changes to the layout of the street. Much of the terrace on the eastern side was pushed further eastward, allowing for a broader and slightly grander approach to the estate. No mention of this widening has been found in any published account of Glenarm's development, but the discrepancy between the alignment of much of the eastern terrace as shown on the 1832 Ordnance Survey map and that of 1857 suggests it did indeed occur. This theory is supported by an 1830 illustration of the town — "The town and castle of Glenarm, Co. Antrim" by T. M. Baynes, published in Ireland Illustrated (London, 1831) — which shows the two sections of terrace on the eastern side out of alignment, and by the fact that many of the buildings recorded in the 1833 valuation of the eastern side of the street appear to bear no relation to those recorded in the valuation of 1859, as though all had been demolished. The age and condition grading used in the 1859 valuation indicates that most of the rebuilt dwellings were around twenty years old or slightly more at that date, placing much of the redevelopment in the mid to later 1830s. This is consistent with a remark in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 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." The western side of Altmore Street may have remained largely untouched by the changes of the mid-19th century, with some of the buildings standing today possibly pre-dating the 1830s, though some properties at the very southern end were cleared away when the Town Gate was built and the land incorporated into the estate.

The site of no. 25 is shown as occupied on O'Hara's 1779 map and on the 1832 Ordnance Survey map. On the 1779 map the plot occupied by this house and that to the north are listed as the property of one John Richey. This John may have been a descendant or relation of Alexander Richey, "yeoman of Glenarm," who was granted a lease in December 1678 of a tenement with a "frontage of 62 feet, on the south side of Altmore and west side of the street," with a requirement to "build a house of stone and lime." The length of that frontage suggests the 1678 lease refers to the same piece of ground held by the 1779 Richey. The 1678 lease implies that a building appeared on the site soon after that date, and as the plot was under single ownership in 1779 it may be assumed that the present two dwellings appeared sometime after that. The present no. 25 is almost certainly the house of the same dimensions recorded in the 1859 valuation notebook. The valuers describe it as "not new" at that point — graded B, meaning at least twenty years old — with eight rooms and an attic, leased to a William Reid by James Hannah, Lord Antrim's agent, who lived in the house just to the south (now nos. 27–29). A crossed-out note in the same valuation suggests, however, that the house had previously been the home of a Lieutenant Sackville Thompson RN. Thompson may have been a coastguard officer, as the 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoirs mention a Lieutenant Servante RN as "chief officer of the coastguard" in the area. The property was completely renovated by its then owner in around the 1960s, during which the windows were enlarged.