17 Toberwine Street, Glenarm, Ballymena, Co Antirm, BT44 0AP

17 Toberwine Street is a plain two-storey rendered terraced house, situated on the west side of Toberwine Street in Glenarm, County Antrim. The building as it stands largely dates from the 1950s, when it was reportedly gutted and practically rebuilt, though it may retain some fabric from an earlier dwelling pre-dating 1832.

The front elevation faces east and is asymmetrical. To the left of the ground floor is a large flat-arched recess housing the front entrance, which consists of a recent timber door with a recent fanlight and sidelights. To the right of this recess are two plain sash windows. The first floor has three unevenly spaced plain sash windows. The front façade is finished in unpainted roughcast, with smooth cement render surrounds to all openings, a smooth cement render first-floor cill band, and a smooth cement render base.

To the rear, the ground floor has a slightly right-of-centre recent timber-sheeted and glazed door. To the left of this door is a sash window whose broad box frame suggests it is older than the sash frames on the front elevation. Further to the left projects a small single-storey shed extension of relatively recent appearance. To the right of the rear doorway is a small window with a recent casement frame. At first-floor level to the rear there are two sash windows, similar in character to the broader-boxed window below left. The rear façade is finished in a 'salt and pepper' dry dash. The roof is gabled and slated. A large recent flat-roofed dormer projects to the rear. The building has two rendered chimneystacks. Rainwater goods are a mixture of cast iron and PVC.

Toberwine Street — whose name translates as 'Street of the Sweet Well' — is considered to represent the original area of settlement within the village of Glenarm, its narrowness reflecting 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 opposite side of the river. Some historians record that the old castle was occupied by tenants in the later 17th century, implying some form of repair, though Richard Dobbs makes no reference to it in his 1683 description of the village. The earliest mention of 'Toberwine' in the Antrim Papers appears in a lease of November 1672, referring to a house in the area, with 'Toberwine Street' first named in a lease of August 1709. On John O'Hara's map of Glenarm dated 1779 — 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 identifiable remains of the old castle are shown on that map, but 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 ruins of some kind may have survived into the early 19th century. Evidence from the 1833 valuation indicates that most buildings now visible on the west side of the street were present in some form at 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 dating from around 1840 and nos. 20–34 and 62 from after around 1860, some of the latter replacing modest single-storey dwellings.

A building is shown on the site of no. 17 on O'Hara's 1779 map and on every subsequent map of the village. The first valuation of 1833 records a relatively old dwelling — possibly of late 18th-century date — of similar dimensions to the present building, with a Robert McWharry listed as resident. The same building appears in the 1859 valuation, by which time a James Lusk was the occupant. Post-1959 valuation maps give no indication that the property was demolished after that date, but the current owner states that the building was gutted and practically rebuilt in the 1950s, an account that much of the surviving detailing appears to support. The property lies within a conservation area.