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

22 Altmore Street is a simple two-storey terraced house of around 1835, one of a handed pair, situated on the east side of Altmore Street in Glenarm. Sufficient original detail and character survive to justify its listed status.

THE BUILDING

The asymmetrical front façade faces west. On the ground floor, to the left, is a panelled timber door with a narrow rectangular fanlight containing decorative tracery. The doorway is framed by relatively plain pilasters and a pediment. This surround looks slightly awkward and oversized — the pediment actually touches the sill of the first-floor window directly above — but it appears to be original. To the right of the entrance are two sash windows with Georgian panes in a six-over-six arrangement. The first floor has three similar sash windows. The front façade is finished in painted render with in-and-out bevelled quoins. The door panels are painted a different colour from the rest of the door.

The roof is gabled and covered in asbestos slate. To the front slope there is a Velux window and a small skylight; to the rear slope there is another Velux window and a small gabled dormer with a modern window frame. There is a large brick chimney stack to the south, shared with the neighbouring No. 24. The rainwater goods appear to be entirely cast iron.

THE REAR ELEVATION

To the left-hand side of the rear elevation there is a single-storey projection — the original kitchen outshot — with an asbestos slate gabled and hipped roof. On its north face there is a broad window with a modern frame and a timber-sheeted door. On the east-facing gable of this projection there is a small shed with a mono-pitched roof and a timber-sheeted door to its north face. Immediately to the right of this projection, on the rear façade of the main section, there is a sash window matching those at the front, and a similar window at first-floor level to the left. The right-hand side of the rear elevation is occupied by a relatively shallow two-storey flat-roofed extension, added some time after 1973. On the ground floor of its east face there is a partly glazed door and a small window with a modern frame; at first-floor level there is a larger window with a modern frame. The entire rear elevation is finished in painted roughcast.

HISTORY AND CONTEXT

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 reference to building plots in this vicinity appears in a lease of August 1673 mentioning 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 existence of a "street" in the same vicinity.

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 that side of the 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, while No. 29 has a datestone 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 at some point between 1832 and 1857 appears to have led to radical changes to the layout of the street, with much of the eastern terrace pushed further eastward to allow for a broader and slightly grander approach to the estate. No mention of this widening has been found in any published account of the development of Glenarm. However, the discrepancy between the orientation of the eastern terrace as shown on the 1832 Ordnance Survey map and that of 1857 strongly suggests it did take place. This conclusion 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 indicates that most of the houses on this side were single-storey at that date. It is also supported 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 1859 valuation, as though all had been demolished and replaced. 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 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 appears to have remained largely unaffected by these changes, with many pre-1830s buildings probably surviving to this day, though some properties at the very southern end were cleared away when the Town Gate was constructed and the land incorporated into the estate.

No. 22, like much of the eastern side of Altmore Street, appears to date from the mid to later 1830s, when the street was widened. The property is largely identical — though handed — to its neighbour to the south, No. 24, suggesting both were built at the same time. In the 1859 valuation it is recorded as being just over twenty years old, with one James Boyd noted as the leaseholder. At that point Boyd was living in the neighbouring No. 24, with No. 22 recorded as vacant. The shallow two-storey flat-roofed extension to the rear was added some time after 1973.

The property lies within a conservation area.