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

No. 6 Altmore Street is a large, three-storey terraced house of possible pre-1832 construction, now in use as a shop, situated on the east side of Altmore Street in Glenarm. Although its survival of period character is considered borderline, the quality of its front elevation, its staircase, and its group value with neighbouring properties are judged sufficient to warrant its listed status.

EXTERIOR

The front (west) elevation is asymmetrical. At ground floor level on the left is a shop window with three segmental arch-headed lights — this window was altered at some point after 1977 and previously incorporated a door. To the right of the shop window is an entrance with a panelled door and a plain rectangular fanlight. Running directly above both the door and the shop window is a simple painted timber signboard with a raised frame. The first floor has three unevenly spaced plain sash windows, while the second floor has three smaller window openings fitted with modern frames. The entire front façade is finished in painted lined render, with V-jointed quoins to the left (north) corner.

At ground floor level on the left of the rear elevation is a small open lean-to, which contains the back end of the coach arch. Immediately to the right of this is a two-storey lean-to return, which extends eastward into a single-storey flat-roofed extension. The extension has a modern window to its south face and a modern door to its east face. The two-storey lean-to has a timber-sheeted door at ground floor level on the south face, and a window with a modern frame at first floor level on the north face. A tall chimney stack rises from the east face. On the rear façade of the main building, there is a window with a modern frame at first floor level on the left, and at second floor level there are two small four-pane windows, one to the left and one to the right. The rear elevation, including the two-storey lean-to, is finished in roughcast render. The extension is finished in dry dash and plain render.

ROOF AND RAINWATER GOODS

The main gabled roof is covered in asbestos slates and carries two shared rendered chimney stacks. The open lean-to has a corrugated iron roof, and the two-storey lean-to roof is finished in corrugated asbestos. Rainwater goods are a mixture of cast iron and PVC.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Altmore 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 evidence for building activity in this vicinity goes back to at least 1673, when a lease refers to a "housestead, garden of tenement…extending back to Altmore Brook." Further leases of December 1678 mention "tenements" on the "south side of Altmore" and refer to the presence of a "street." Many of the earliest houses in the street may have been built on the western side: 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 this side of the street may originally have faced the river rather than the street. 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, while no. 29 has a 1739 datestone on its river-facing side. 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, which appears to have taken place between 1832 and 1857, seems to have caused 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 account of the development of Glenarm appears to record this widening, but the discrepancy between the alignment of much of the eastern terrace as shown on the Ordnance Survey maps of 1832 and 1857 strongly suggests it occurred. An 1830 illustration of the town — T. M. Baynes's "The town and castle of Glenarm, Co. Antrim," 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. Furthermore, 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 1859 valuation, as though all had been demolished and rebuilt. The age and condition grading used in the 1859 valuation suggests 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 the street may have remained largely untouched by these mid-19th-century changes, with some buildings possibly predating the 1830s, though a number of properties at the very southern end were cleared away when the Town Gate was built and the land incorporated into the estate.

No. 6, along with the two properties immediately to its north and south, appears to be among the only buildings on the eastern side of Altmore Street to have escaped the redevelopment of around 1835–40. Both the 1832 and 1857 Ordnance Survey maps show the site continuously occupied, and the 1859 valuation records a three-storey property of the same dimensions as the present building, described as "old" at that date. The valuers' use of "old" appears in practice to have referred to buildings of fifty years or more, suggesting the house may be late 18th century in origin or older. John O'Hara's 1779 map does show a substantial-looking building on this site. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1835 state that there was only one three-storey house in Glenarm at that time, though it is uncertain whether "three storey" there refers to three full-height storeys with an attic or loft, or merely three levels of windows as is the case here. It is also possible that the roof of this property and that of its immediate southern neighbour were raised slightly after 1835 to match the height of the then newly built properties nearby, though the 1859 valuation gives no hint of this. The available evidence suggests that the house was probably standing by around 1830. The leaseholder and occupier recorded in 1859 was one David McNeill. The shop front may have been inserted in the late 19th century, though it has been altered in more recent times.