44-46 Toberwine Street, Glenarm, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 0AP

44-46 Toberwine Street is a relatively small, plain, two-storey terraced house dating from around 1835 to the 1840s, situated on the east side of Toberwine Street in Glenarm. It was originally built as a combined house and shop, but its shopfront was removed around 1990. The property sits within a conservation area.

The front elevation faces roughly west and is asymmetrical. On the ground floor, to the right, is a panelled timber door with a plain rectangular fanlight above it. To the left are two sash windows with Georgian panes in a 6-over-6 configuration. Prior to the removal of the shopfront around 1990, there was an additional doorway and a large shop window to the left of the present door. At first floor level there are three evenly spaced sash windows, similar in style to those below. The front facade is finished in relatively recent lined render with plain quoins. Window sills are painted stone.

To the rear, on the left side, there is a large two-storey gabled return which appears to be relatively recent in origin. The south face of this return is blank, while the east face has a modern window at ground floor level and a smaller modern window at first floor level. On the north face of the return, the left side has a chimney serving the boiler, which is housed in a small external enclosure, and is otherwise blank; the right side is recessed and has a modern glazed door at ground floor level and a small window with a modern frame at first floor level. To the right of the return, on the rear facade of the main section of the house, there is a window at ground floor level with a modern frame, and another above it at first floor level. The rear elevation is finished in unpainted roughcast. The main gabled roof is slated, as is the roof of the return. At the rear there is a pitched roof dormer to the left (south), with a Velux window to its right. The main roof has two rendered chimneystacks, with a much smaller stack on the north side of the return roof. Rainwater goods are cast iron.

The 1859 valuation records a relatively newly built shop and house on this site, matching the dimensions of the present building, then occupied by a Sarah Hunter and described as containing a shop and kitchen, three rooms over, two attics, and a small rear apartment. It is probable that the building was constructed at the same time as its neighbour to the south (the present no. 48), as both were recorded as being of the same age at the time of the valuation and both were occupied by people named Hunter, who may have built them together. The site itself is shown as occupied on John O'Hara's map of Glenarm dated 1779, and on all subsequent maps. The building retained its shopfront until around 1990.

Toberwine Street — whose name translates as "Street of the Sweet Well" — is thought to represent the original area of settlement within the village of Glenarm, its narrowness hinting at its antiquity. The original 13th-century castle of Glenarm, around which the village developed, is believed to have stood at the south-west corner of the street, on the site now occupied by the former courthouse. The castle was deliberately demolished by Sorley Boy MacDonnell in 1597 and apparently never fully repaired; his descendant Sir Randal McDonnell built a new residence on the other side of the river. Some historians record that the old castle was occupied by tenants in the later 17th century, implying some degree of repair, 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, referring to a house within the area, with "Toberwine Street" named explicitly in a lease of August 1709. By the time of O'Hara's 1779 map — the earliest surviving plan of the village — the street is shown fully developed on both sides, with the market and courthouse at its south-west end. No verifiable remains of the old castle are shown on that map, but the 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoirs refer to "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 survived into the early 19th century. The 1833 valuation indicates that most buildings on the west side of the street were already present in some form by that date and were probably of 18th-century origin. The east side of the street saw considerably more development after 1833, with nos. 4–12, 36–38, and 44–50 all dating from around 1835 to the 1840s, and nos. 14, 20–34, 40–42, and 62 post-dating around 1860, some of the latter replacing modest single-storey dwellings.