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

50 Toberwine Street is a plain, two-storey stuccoed terraced house dating from around 1840, situated on the east side of Toberwine Street in Glenarm. It was probably originally built as a police constabulary barracks, and the evidence of the 1859 valuation confirms it was serving that function by that date. It may have continued as the local barracks until around 1900, when the police moved to a property a few doors down at what is now number 56. After that, the building became a private dwelling, a use it retains today.

The front elevation faces roughly west and is asymmetrical. Slightly to the left of centre at ground floor level is a panelled door with a four-pane rectangular fanlight above it. To either side of the doorway is a sash window with horizontal glazing bars in a 2-over-2 configuration, and there are three similar windows on the first floor. All the windows have moulded reveals. The front facade is finished in plain render and painted.

To the right side of the rear east elevation is a long two-storey return with a mono-pitch roof, which appears to be largely original. The east face of this return abuts a small single-storey outbuilding or shed, while the upper section is blank. The north face forms the boundary wall to the rear yard of number 48 Toberwine Street and is also blank. On the south face of the return, at ground floor level, there is a small fixed-light window to the left, followed to the right by a timber-sheeted door, then a second timber-sheeted door, and finally a window opening that is now boarded over. The first floor of the south face has three unevenly spaced large casement windows, the one furthest to the left being slightly wider than the other two. Much of the ground floor of the return is made up of storerooms.

At the centre of the ground floor of the rear elevation of the main building there is a modern half-glazed door. To its left is a plain fixed-light window and to its right is a plain sash window. The first floor of the rear elevation has two plain sash windows. Rising from just right of centre at eaves level is a large gabled half-dormer containing a semicircular arch-headed window opening fitted with a modern frame; the gable has plain bargeboards. The rear elevation is finished in painted roughcast render.

The main roof is gabled and slated, with two small cast iron skylights to the rear and two rendered chimneystacks. The roof covering of the two-storey return could not be seen at the time of inspection. Rainwater goods throughout are cast iron.

To the south side of the rear yard stands a large single-storey gabled outbuilding, set close to but free-standing from the main rear elevation. This is thought to have originally served as a cell house associated with the building's police barracks function. It is finished in roughcast render with cast iron rainwater goods.

Toberwine Street — whose name translates as "Street of the Sweet Well" — is believed to represent the original area of settlement within Glenarm village, its narrowness suggesting considerable 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 courthouse. The castle was deliberately demolished by Sorley Boy MacDonnell in 1597 and apparently not repaired, with his descendant Sir Randal McDonnell subsequently building 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, though Richard Dobbs makes no mention of it in his 1683 description of the village. The first reference to "Toberwine" in the Antrim Papers appears in a lease of November 1672, with "Toberwine Street" 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 fully developed on both sides, with the market and courthouse at the south-west end. Although no verifiable remains of the old castle are identifiable on that map, a remark in the 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoirs referring to "the foundations of a very extensive old castle which stood at the centre of the town until a few years ago" suggests ruins of some kind lingered into the early 19th century.

The 1833 valuation evidence indicates that most buildings now seen on the west side of the street were present in some form by that date, many of them probably 18th century in origin. The east side saw considerably more development after 1833, with numbers 4 to 12 all dating from around 1840, and numbers 14, 20 to 34, 40 to 42, and 62 all post-dating around 1860, some replacing earlier modest single-storey dwellings. A building or buildings are shown on the site of number 50 on O'Hara's 1779 map and on all subsequent maps. A relatively newly constructed building matching the dimensions of the present structure is recorded in the 1859 valuation, suggesting it was built around 1840, possibly at the same time as its immediate neighbours to the north at numbers 44–46 and 48.