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

No. 24 Altmore Street is a plain two-storey terraced house of around 1835, one of a handed pair, situated on the east side of Altmore Street in Glenarm, County Antrim. It sits within a conservation area and retains just enough of its original character to justify listing, despite later alterations.

The asymmetrical front façade faces west and is finished in painted render. On the ground floor, a panelled timber door with a narrow rectangular fanlight sits to the right, with two sash windows to its left, each glazed with Georgian panes in a 6/6 arrangement. These frames are recent replacements and have glazing bars and boxes that are somewhat thicker than would originally have been the case. The first floor has three similar sash windows. The gabled roof is slated and contains two Velux windows to the front slope, with a further Velux window and a small gabled dormer fitted with a PVC window to the rear slope. A large brick chimneystack sits to the north, shared with the neighbouring property at no. 22. Cast iron rainwater goods serve the front elevation; the rear has a mixture of cast iron and PVC.

The rear elevation is finished in dry dash render. To its left is a two-storey flat-roofed return that appears to be a post-1973 addition, not being shown on the 1:2500 Ordnance Survey map of that date. Its ground floor rear face has a partly glazed doorway and a window with a PVC frame; the first floor has a larger window, also PVC-framed. To the right of the rear elevation is a single-storey flat-roofed projection that has been modernised or entirely rebuilt in recent times. This has two windows of varying size in its south face, both with PVC frames, and a lean-to shed attached to its east face. Between the return and the extension, the main rear section of the building has a recent glazed double door at ground floor level, and a PVC-framed window at first floor right.

The property is largely identical in form to its neighbour to the north, no. 22, though the two are handed — that is, mirrored — suggesting both were built at the same time. Like much of the eastern side of Altmore Street, the house appears to date from the mid to later 1830s, a period of significant redevelopment along this side of the street. The reconstruction of the eastern terrace is thought to have been prompted by the construction of the Town Gate to the Glenarm Castle estate sometime between 1832 and 1857, which appears to have required the eastern terrace line to be pushed further eastward in order to create a broader and slightly grander approach to the estate. This theory is supported by the discrepancy between the terrace's alignment on the Ordnance Survey maps of 1832 and 1857, by an 1830 illustration of the town showing the two sections of the eastern terrace out of alignment, and by the fact that properties recorded on this side in the 1833 valuation appear to bear little relation to those recorded in 1859 — as if all had been demolished and rebuilt in the intervening years. The 1859 valuation grades no. 24 as 'B+', indicating that it was probably just over twenty years old at that time, and records it as being in the hands of one James Boyd.

The wider history of Altmore Street is closely tied to the development of Glenarm itself. The 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. Documentary references to building plots in the vicinity date back to a lease of August 1673, which mentions a 'housestead, garden of tenement…extending back to Altmore Brook', with further leases of December 1678 referring to 'tenements' on the 'south side of Altmore' and to the presence of a 'street'. Some of the earliest houses may have been built on the western side of the street, and prior to the enclosure of the Glenarm Castle estate grounds in the 1750s, a number of buildings on this side may originally have faced the Glenarm River rather than the street. The present no. 15 appears to have originally had an almost symmetrical elevation facing the river and a markedly asymmetrical one facing the street, while no. 29 has a 1739 date stone on its river-facing side. The earliest surviving map of Glenarm, drawn by John O'Hara in 1779, shows the street fully built up on both sides, with the western terrace extending further south than it does today, beyond the line of what is now the Town Gate. The western side of the street may have remained largely untouched by the changes of the 1830s, with some buildings possibly pre-dating that decade, although properties at the very southern end were cleared away when the Town Gate was constructed and the land incorporated into the castle estate. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of around 1835 note 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', a remark consistent with the dating of no. 24 and its neighbours.