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

48 Toberwine Street is a small, plain two-storey stuccoed terraced house built in around 1835–40, which underwent major renovation in approximately 1991–92, during which a large rear return was added. The property sits on the east side of Toberwine Street, within the conservation area of the village of Glenarm, County Antrim. It is privately owned and currently in residential use. An inspection through the windows has confirmed that the internal layout and detailing have been altered.

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 glazing bars in a six-over-six pane arrangement, and there are two matching sash windows at first-floor level. The façade is finished in painted lined render with plain quoins. A recently constructed rendered chimney sits to the left side of the ridge. The roof is covered in natural slate, and cast iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout. Window sills are of painted stone.

To the rear, a large two-storey gabled return was added to the left side during the 1990s renovation. The south face of the return is blank. The east face has a modern window at ground-floor level and a smaller modern window at first-floor level. The left side of the north face of the return has a chimney serving the boiler, which is housed in a small external housing, and is otherwise blank. The right side of the north face is recessed and features a modern glazed door at ground-floor level and a small window at first-floor level, both with modern frames. To the right of the return, on the rear façade of the main section of the house, there is a ground-floor window with a modern frame and another at first-floor level. The rear elevation is finished in unpainted roughcast render. The gabled roof and the roof of the return are both slated. There is a pitched roof dormer to the left (south) at the rear, 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. Cast iron rainwater goods are fitted, and window sills are of painted stone.

Toberwine Street — whose name translates as "Street of the Sweet Well" — is thought to represent the original area of settlement within 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 destroyed by Sorley Boy MacDonnell in 1597 and was apparently not repaired, with his descendant Sir Randal McDonnell building a new residence on the other side of the river instead. Some historians record that the old castle was occupied by tenants — and therefore presumably repaired in some fashion — in the later 17th century, though Richard Dobbs makes no mention of it in his 1683 description of the village. The earliest reference to "Toberwine" in the Antrim Papers appears in a lease of November 1672, which mentions a house in the area, with "Toberwine Street" named in a lease of August 1709. On 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 courthouse at its south-west end. While no verifiable trace of the old castle is 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 that some ruins may have persisted into the early 19th century.

Evidence from the 1833 valuation indicates that most of the buildings now visible on the west side of the street were already present in some form at that date, and many were probably 18th-century in origin. The east side of the street saw considerably more development after 1833, with numbers 4–12, 36–38, and 44–52 all dating from around 1835–40, and numbers 14, 20–34, 40–42, and 62 dating from after around 1860 — some of the latter replacing modest single-storey dwellings. There is some, though uncertain, evidence that the large three-storey former Antrim Arms Hotel, and possibly its neighbour number 56, may already have been standing in the early 1830s.

The site of number 48 is shown as occupied on John O'Hara's 1779 map and on all subsequent maps. The 1859 valuation records a relatively newly built house on this site — rated grade A minus — matching the dimensions of the present building and at that time occupied by a William Hunter, described as having "2 rooms below, 2 over and a garret." It is probable that the property was built at around the same time as its neighbour to the south, the present number 44–46, as both were considered to be of the same age at the time of the valuation and both were occupied by people named Hunter, who may have built both properties together. The major renovation that transformed the building — including the addition of the rear return — took place in around 1991–92.