14 Castle Street, Glenarm, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 0AT

14 Castle Street is a plain, two-storey rendered terraced house built in 1830, situated on the south side of Castle Street in Glenarm. It forms one of a largely identical pair with its immediate neighbour to the west (No. 16), both constructed in that year by a builder named Adam Ellison. The property was delisted on 8 March 2006, having been altered to the point where it no longer meets the statutory requirements for listing, though it remains within a conservation area.

The front elevation faces north and is asymmetrical. On the ground floor to the left is a plain sheeted timber door with a shallow plain rectangular fanlight above it. To the right of the door are two 6-over-6 sash windows. On the first floor, positioned directly above the ground-floor windows, are two further sash windows of similar style but shorter in height. The façade is finished in roughcast render. The gabled roof is slated and has a brick chimneystack to the west. Rainwater goods are cast iron to the north elevation and PVC to the south.

To the rear, a large two-storey flat-roofed return covers most of the original rear façade and appears to be largely modern in construction. On the rear elevation, one first-floor window is visible to the right, though it could not be viewed in its entirety; a corresponding ground-floor window is assumed to sit directly below, though this could not be confirmed at the time of survey.

By 1859, the house was recorded as being in the ownership of a Mrs Eliza Boyd and occupied by a John Greer and a Thomas Moan.

Castle Street is the shortest of Glenarm's four main original streets, running westwards from the intersection of Toberwine and Altmore Streets to the bridge over the Glenarm River, with Lower Castle Street branching off southwards near the west end. The street formed part of the old main road from Larne, a route of possible medieval origin that wound northwards through The Vennel, across the bridge, and on towards what is now the Straidkilly Road. The earliest surviving leases in the Antrim Papers relating to plots along the street date from 1711, though at least one building — the old parish church, which stood at the south-west end where the former schoolhouse now is — was already in place by 1683. The old 13th-century Bisset castle, believed to have been a tower house type structure, is reputed to have stood at the north-east end of the street; the still-extant former courthouse, thought to have been standing at least since the 1750s, is believed to incorporate part of its ruins. The bridge at the west end was erected in 1682, replacing a ford, but had to be largely rebuilt in 1713 following flood damage. For obvious reasons the street was originally known as Bridge Street, a name that appears to have persisted until the mid-19th century.

John O'Hara's map of 1779 — the earliest known plan of Glenarm — shows the street fully developed on both sides, with rows of properties matching the extent visible on the Ordnance Survey map of 1832. Evidence from the 1859 valuation suggests that most of the buildings shown in 1832 are those that survive today, with the short terrace in Lower Castle Street appearing around 1835 to 1840. O'Hara's map clearly illustrates the former importance of Castle Street as part of the principal northward route from Larne, with the road skirting the grounds of Glenarm Castle on the west side of the river. In the early 19th century this arrangement was fundamentally changed: the old road was superseded by the new Coast Road and a new Glenarm Bridge built in 1813 at the north end of the village, and the castle grounds were enclosed. This process, complete by the mid-1820s, appears to have led to a gradual decline in the street's status. It is perhaps telling that while a notable figure such as Lord Antrim's agent could be found living in Castle Street in the late 18th century, by the mid-1830s the agent had relocated to the south end of the newly widened and considerably grander Altmore Street.