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

8 Altmore Street is a three-storey terraced house on the east side of Altmore Street in Glenarm, probably dating from around 1830 or possibly slightly earlier, making it one of the very few buildings on this side of the street to have survived a major phase of redevelopment that took place in the mid- to late 1830s. It was delisted on 23 January 2006, having been judged no longer of special architectural or historic interest. Only the front elevation retains any of its original period character. The building is situated within a conservation area and is in private ownership. It currently contains two apartments — one at ground floor level and a two-storey apartment above — and was formerly used in part as a shop.

The asymmetrical front (west) elevation reflects its mixed history. To the left is a modern panelled door with a plain fanlight, framed by timber pilasters with mouldings, providing access to the upper apartment. To the right is a symmetrical recessed shop front, believed to have been inserted sometime after 1859. At its centre is a recessed panelled door, flanked on either side by large four-pane shop windows with plain rendered stall risers. Plain cast iron columns stand to either side of the shop door, and plain rendered pilasters flank the ground floor entrance. The entire ground floor — shop front and apartment door alike — is set back in a recessed arrangement.

At first floor level there are two sash windows with Georgian-pane glazing (six panes over six). At second floor level there are two smaller windows with modern frames. Bevelled quoins run up the left-hand side at both first and second floor levels. The first and second floors are finished in painted lined render.

The main roof is gabled and covered with asbestos slate, with two shared rendered chimneystacks.

To the rear, a large flat-roofed extension runs the full width of the building. At ground floor level this extension has a modern window to the centre and a modern door to the left. At first floor level in the original rear wall there are three evenly spaced window openings with modern frames, and at second floor level two more widely spaced window openings, also with modern frames. The rear wall of the original building at first and second floor level is finished in unpainted roughcast, while the wall of the single-storey extension is in unpainted smooth render.

To the rear is an enclosed yard. The yards belonging to numbers 8, 10, and 10a are linked and are all accessed through the coach arch at number 10a. Historic mapping indicates that there were once two small separate outbuildings within the rear yard.

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. Documentary evidence of building in this vicinity goes back to at least 1673, when a lease refers to a "housestead, garden of tenement…extending back to Altmore Brook," with further leases of December 1678 mentioning "tenements" on the "south side of Altmore" and the presence of a "street." The earliest surviving map of Glenarm, drawn by John O'Hara in 1779, shows the street fully developed on both sides.

The construction of the Town Gate to the Glenarm Castle estate, sometime between 1832 and 1857, appears to have triggered a significant reorganisation of the eastern side of Altmore Street. The line of the eastern terrace was pushed further eastward to create a broader and somewhat grander approach to the estate. This redevelopment is not mentioned in any published account of Glenarm's history, but is suggested by the discrepancy between the 1832 and 1857 Ordnance Survey maps, by an 1830 illustration showing the two sections of the eastern terrace out of alignment, and by the fact that properties recorded in the 1833 valuation for the eastern side of the street bear almost no relation to those recorded in the 1859 valuation — as though all had been demolished and rebuilt. The condition grading used in the 1859 valuation suggests most of the rebuilt properties were around twenty years old at that date, pointing to redevelopment in the mid- to late 1830s. This is consistent 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."

Number 8 and the two properties immediately to its north appear to be the only buildings on the eastern side of Altmore Street to have escaped this wholesale redevelopment. Both the 1832 and 1857 Ordnance Survey maps show the site continuously occupied, and the 1859 valuation records a three-storey property of the same dimensions as the present building, noted as "old" at that date. The valuers' use of the term "old" appears generally to have referred to buildings of fifty years or more, which would suggest a late 18th-century origin, though O'Hara's 1779 map appears to show two smaller buildings on this site rather than the present structure. The 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoirs record only one three-storey house in Glenarm at that time, though it is uncertain whether "three storey" in that context means three full-height storeys or simply three levels of windows, as is the case here. It is also possible that the roof was raised slightly after 1835 to match the height of the newly built properties immediately to the south. On the available evidence, the most that can be said with confidence is that the building was probably standing by around 1830.

Annotations to the map accompanying the 1859 valuation indicate that the shop front was inserted after that date. In 1859 the property was owned or leased by one Bernard Black and was occupied by lodgers.