9-13 Altmore Street, Glenarm, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 0AR

Nos. 9–13 Altmore Street, Glenarm, is a plain two-storey terraced block of probable 1860s construction, containing two dwellings. It sits on the west side of Altmore Street, with its building line set further forward than the properties to the south. The block was delisted in June 2007 and is not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest, though it lies within a conservation area. Both properties are in private residential use.

No. 9–11 (the northern dwelling)

The front elevation faces roughly east and is asymmetrical. At ground floor level, slightly left of centre, is a recent timber panelled door with a four-pane rectangular fanlight above. To its left is a coach arch — now permanently closed and blocked up beyond the entrance — with timber-sheeted double doors set within a shallow elliptical archway. To the right of the house doorway are two six-over-six sash windows. At first floor level there are four evenly spaced sash windows. This property formerly contained a late 19th century-looking shop front until recent renovations, when it was replaced with two windows.

At the rear, the centre of the elevation has a recent single-storey flat-roofed return. To the left of this is a six-over-six sash window, and to the right — at the time of the survey visit — a door opening with no door or frame in place. At first floor level there are three similar sash windows, two to the right and one to the left. The rear of the main gabled roof has two cast-iron skylights. The rear walls are finished in limestone-chipped render.

No. 13 (the southern dwelling)

On the front elevation at ground floor level, to the right, is a panelled door of apparently original appearance. To its left are two six-over-six sash windows. At first floor level there are three similar windows. At the rear, to the left (north) side, there is a large two-storey flat-roofed return fitted with modern windows. To the right of this return, there is a six-over-six sash window at ground floor level and a further matching window at first floor level. The rear of the main gabled roof again has two cast-iron skylights. The rear walls are finished in plain render.

Shared and general features

The front façade of the whole block is finished in lined render with plain quoins to either side and between the two houses, and a projecting plinth. The main gabled roof is slated. There are three squat plain rendered chimneystacks. Cast-iron rainwater goods serve the front elevation; mainly PVC rainwater goods are fitted to the rear.

Historical context of Altmore Street

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. The earliest known 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 1678 leases.

Many of the earliest houses may have been built 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 had an almost symmetrical elevation facing the river and a markedly asymmetrical one facing the street, while no. 29 has a date stone of 1739 on its river-facing side rather than its street-facing front.

The earliest surviving map of Glenarm, drawn by John O'Hara in 1779, shows the street fully developed on both sides, with the western terrace extending further 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 radical changes to the street layout. The line of much of the eastern terrace was pushed further eastward, allowing for a broader and slightly grander approach to the estate. No account of this widening appears in any published history of Glenarm, but the discrepancy between the alignment of the eastern terrace as shown on the 1832 Ordnance Survey map and that of 1857 strongly suggests it took place. This interpretation is further supported by an 1830 illustration of the town by T.M. Baynes (published in Ireland Illustrated, London, 1831), which shows the two sections of the eastern terrace out of alignment, and by the fact that many of the buildings recorded in the 1833 valuation of the eastern side bear no apparent relation to those recorded in the 1859 valuation — as if all had been demolished and rebuilt. The age and condition grading of properties in the 1859 valuation indicates that most of the rebuilt dwellings were at least twenty or so years old by that date, placing much of the redevelopment in the mid to later 1830s. This accords 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 buildings possibly pre-dating the 1830s, though properties at the very southern end were cleared away with the construction of the Town Gate and absorbed into the estate grounds.

Nos. 9–13 specifically

Buildings are shown on this site on O'Hara's map of 1779 and on all subsequent maps. The 1859 valuation records supply no dimensions for the house at the southern end of the site, though its low rateable value suggests it was single storey. For the property to the north, dimensions indicate it was part single and part two storey. It therefore appears that the present block postdates 1859; however, judging from its façade — even before the recent alterations to no. 9–11 — both dwellings are thought to have been built shortly after that date, perhaps around 1865.