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

30 Altmore Street is a three-storey late Georgian style terraced house dating from approximately 1840 to 1845, situated on the east side of Altmore Street in Glenarm, County Antrim. It is one of a group of three largely identical properties — numbers 28, 30, and 32 — and retains sufficient architectural character to remain listed despite alterations made over many decades.

The front elevation faces west and is asymmetrical. On the ground floor, to the left, is a panelled timber door with a rectangular fanlight containing decorative tracery. The door opening is framed by shallow pilasters decorated with simple Greek key incised ornament, and is surmounted by a projecting cornice with blocking course. To the right of the door at ground floor level is a sash window with Georgian panes in a six-over-six arrangement. At first floor level there are two similar, evenly spaced sash windows. At second floor level there are two smaller windows whose frames resemble those below but are in fact fitted with top-hung upper sashes rather than true sliding sashes, and have no boxes. The entire front facade is finished in dry dash render. The gabled roof is covered in natural slate, as is the roof of the rear return. There are two rendered chimneystacks. Cast iron rainwater goods are fitted to the front, with PVC goods to the rear.

To the rear, to the right side of the building, there is a large two-storey gabled return added some time after 1903, as it does not appear on the Ordnance Survey town plan of that year. On the south face of this return, at ground floor level to the right, is a plain sheeted door with a sidelight window in a modern frame, while to the left is a further window also with a modern frame. At first floor level there are two more windows, likewise with modern frames. The north face of the return appears to be blank, and the east gabled face abuts a retaining wall that holds back a raised garden area. On the exposed section of the rear facade of the main house, to the left of the extension, there is a window with a modern frame at both ground and first floor levels. A further window to the right at first floor level also has a modern frame but is set at a slightly lower, half-landing level. At second floor level there are two sash windows matching those on the front elevation, with the right-hand window again set at the lower half-landing level.

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. The earliest documentary references to building plots in the vicinity date from a lease of August 1673, which mentions 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 presence of a street. Many of the earliest houses may have been built on the western side of the street. Prior to the walling in of the grounds immediately around Glenarm Castle 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 number 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 number 29 bears a 1739 date stone 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, which took place sometime between 1832 and 1857, appears to have brought about radical changes to the layout of the street. Much of the terrace on the eastern side was pushed further eastwards, allowing for a broader and slightly grander approach to the estate. No published account of Glenarm's development appears to record this widening, 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 occurred. This conclusion is further supported by an 1830 illustration of the town by T.M. Baynes, published in Ireland Illustrated in 1831, which shows the two sections of the eastern terrace out of alignment and indicates that most of the houses on the eastern 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 point, placing much of the redevelopment in the mid to late 1830s. This accords with a remark in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of around 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." An illustration published between 1836 and 1842 to 1843 in Ireland: Its Scenery, Character Etc. by Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall shows the ground on which numbers 28 to 32 now stand as still vacant at that time.

Numbers 28, 30, and 32 Altmore Street are thus identified as the last of the terrace houses to be built during the post-1832 widening, dating from approximately 1840 to 1845. The 1859 valuation records them as just under twenty years old at that point. In 1859 the occupants of number 30 were recorded as "the Misses Disney", who rented or leased the property from James Hannah, Lord Antrim's agent. The western side of Altmore Street is thought to have remained largely unaffected by the mid-19th century changes, and some of its buildings may predate the 1830s, though properties at the very southern end were cleared away when the Town Gate was constructed and the land absorbed into the estate.