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

33 Toberwine Street is a plain, low two-storey terraced house of pre-1832 construction, located within the Glenarm conservation area. The property was originally divided into two separate dwellings and is not considered to be of individual architectural interest.

The front façade is almost symmetrical and finished in dry dash render. At ground floor level, the central opening contains a plain timber-sheeted door of the modern stable variety; the opening itself is notably low. To either side is a sash window with Georgian panes to the upper sash only, in a six-over-one configuration. At first floor level, three almost evenly spaced sash windows are arranged across the façade, matching those below. The first floor window sills are incorporated into a smooth render string course, and all front openings have smooth render surrounds. The door surround has been damaged by the insertion of a new lintel. There is a plain painted eaves course, and the edges of the façade are finished with smooth render vertical bands, also in plain painted render. The roof rises slightly above that of the neighbouring property at number 31 and is finished with a slight overhanging verge and a plain bargeboard.

The rear façade is finished in unpainted roughcast. To the right of centre at ground floor level is a partly glazed door, with recently added French windows to both the left and right. At first floor level there are three unevenly spaced plain sash windows, the rightmost being narrower than the others. Much of the roughcast has broken away at ground floor level — largely as a result of the insertion of the French windows — exposing the underlying rubble construction beneath. The gabled roof is slated. There is a rendered chimneystack to the south and a shared brick chimneystack to the north. Cast iron rainwater pipes and PVC gutters are present.

To the rear west side of the back yard stands a two-storey gabled outbuilding, constructed in random rubble limestone (mainly white) with a corrugated iron roof.

Toberwine Street — whose name translates as "Street of the Sweet Well" — is believed to represent the original area of settlement within the village of Glenarm, its narrowness reflecting something of its antiquity. The original 13th-century castle of Glenarm, around which the village developed, is thought to have stood at the south-west corner of the street, on the site now occupied by the former court house. The castle was deliberately destroyed by Sorley Boy MacDonnell in 1597 and does not appear to have been repaired; his descendant Sir Randal McDonnell subsequently built 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 and was therefore presumably repaired to some degree, but Richard Dobbs makes no reference to it in his 1683 description of the village. The first mention of "Toberwine" in the Antrim Papers appears in a lease of November 1672, which refers to a house within the area, with "Toberwine Street" itself named in a lease of August 1709. By the time of John O'Hara's 1779 map of Glenarm — the earliest surviving plan of the village — the street is shown as fully developed on both sides, with the market and court house at the south-west end. No verifiable remains of the old castle are identifiable on that map, though the 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoirs note "the foundations of a very extensive old castle which stood at the centre of the town until a few years ago," suggesting that some ruins may have survived into the early 19th century. Evidence from the 1833 valuation indicates that most buildings now visible on the west side of the street were present in some form at that date and were probably 18th-century in origin. The east side of the street saw considerably more development after 1833, with numbers 4 to 12 dating from around 1840 and numbers 20 to 34 and 62 built after around 1860, some replacing modest single-storey dwellings.

The site of number 33 is shown as occupied on O'Hara's 1779 map and on all subsequent maps. The first valuation of 1833 records that the property was at that time divided into two separate dwelling houses: the southern portion (measuring 14 by 22½ by 17 feet) was occupied by one John Keanes, and the northern portion (measuring 21 by 22½ by 17 feet) was occupied by a Charlotte Loughran. By 1859 these two dwellings had been amalgamated in some form, as only one occupier is recorded and a single combined set of dimensions is given (35 by 22½ by 17 feet). It appears, however, that for some years after this the second doorway — belonging to the former southern dwelling — remained in place; it is visible in a late 19th-century photograph of Toberwine Street, and the present owners uncovered evidence of its former existence during recent renovations. The deeds for the property refer back to earlier deeds dating from 1796, and it is possible that the present structure is substantially that of this date, since both the 1833 and 1859 valuations describe the property as "old" (graded "C" on both occasions). However, deeds must be treated with caution as evidence for the age of a building, being primarily concerned with land rather than the structures upon it.