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

32 Altmore Street is a three-storey late Georgian style terraced house dating from approximately the early 1840s, forming one of a group of three originally identical properties — numbers 28, 30 and 32 — on the east side of Altmore Street in Glenarm. Enough of its original character survives to merit listing. The building sits within a conservation area and derives additional value from its group relationship with its two neighbours to the north.

The front elevation faces west and is asymmetric. On the ground floor, to the left, is a panelled timber door with a rectangular fanlight containing decorative tracery. The door opening is framed by shallow pilasters decorated with simple Greek key incisions and is surmounted by a projecting cornice and blocking course. To the right of the door on the ground floor is a sash window with Georgian panes (six over six). The first floor has two evenly spaced sash windows of similar design. The second floor has two smaller windows with modern frames. The front façade and south gable are finished in dry dash render, with stone quoins to the right at the front. Cast iron rainwater goods are fitted to the front.

The south gable is blank. Its lower portion is abutted by the wall of the neighbouring Presbyterian church. The right-hand side of the building is smooth rendered with in/out chamfered quoins. To the right of the ridge there is a wide rendered chimney stack carrying two mismatched pots.

To the rear, the east elevation has a recent-looking single-storey flat-roofed return to the right. On the south face of this return there is a door with a modern window to its left. The north face of the return looks into the yard of number 30 and is blank, while the east face abuts a retaining wall holding back a raised garden area. On the ground floor of the main rear façade, to the left of the extension, is a window with a modern frame. At first floor level on the left there is a similar but shorter window, whilst to the right, at lower half-landing level, there is a window with a multi-pane fixed-light semicircular-headed frame. At second floor level on the left there is a window with a modern frame, while at the corresponding lower half-landing level there is a sash window matching that on the ground floor front. The rear façade and return are finished in plain painted render. PVC rainwater goods are fitted to the rear. The main roof is gabled and slated.

Altmore Street takes its name from the Altmore River, a narrow brook that flows from high ground to the south-east to join the Glenarm River to the west. Documentary evidence for building activity in the area goes back to at least 1673, when a lease refers to a "housestead, garden of tenement…extending back to Altmore Brook," with further leases from December 1678 referring to "tenements" on the "south side of Altmore" and mentioning the existence of a "street." Many of the earliest houses may have been built on the western side of the street: before the walling in of the Glenarm Castle estate grounds in the 1750s, the village fronted onto both sides of the Glenarm River, and some buildings on the western side may originally have faced the river. The present number 15, for instance, appears to have originally had an almost symmetrical elevation facing the river and a markedly asymmetrical one facing the street, while number 29 carries a date stone of 1739 on its river-facing side rather than its street-facing front. The earliest surviving map of Glenarm, drawn up by John O'Hara in 1779, shows the street fully developed on both sides, with the western terrace extending further south than it does today, beyond the line of the present Town Gate to the Glenarm Castle estate.

The construction of the Town Gate at some point between 1832 and 1857 appears to have led to radical changes to the layout of the street, with much of the eastern terrace pushed further east to allow for a broader and slightly grander approach to the estate. No account of the development of Glenarm found by the listing researcher makes reference to this widening, but the discrepancy between the alignment of the eastern terrace as shown on the Ordnance Survey maps of 1832 and 1857 suggests it did indeed take place. Further support comes from an 1830 illustration of the town (T.M. Baynes, "The town and castle of Glenarm, Co. Antrim," published in Ireland Illustrated, London 1831), which shows the two sections of the eastern terrace out of alignment and suggests most houses on that side were single storey at that date, and from the fact that many of the buildings recorded in the 1833 valuation of the eastern side of the street appear to bear no relation to those recorded in the 1859 valuation — as if all had been demolished in the intervening period. Age and condition gradings in the 1859 valuation indicate that most of the rebuilt dwellings on this side were approximately twenty years old or slightly more at that date, placing much of the 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." The western side of Altmore Street may have remained largely untouched by these changes, with some buildings there possibly pre-dating the 1830s, though properties at the very southern end were cleared away with the construction of the Town Gate and incorporated into the estate.

Number 32, together with its two identical neighbours numbers 28 and 30, dates from approximately 1840 to 1845. Various sources and physical evidence suggest these three houses were the last of the terrace houses to be built during the post-1832 widening of Altmore Street. An illustration dating from between 1836 and 1842–43 (published in Ireland: Its Scenery, Character etc. by Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall, London 1843) shows the ground on which numbers 28–32 now stand as vacant. The three properties are recorded in the 1859 valuation as just under twenty years old at that point. In 1859, the occupant was recorded as a Sophia Hannah, with the leaseholder listed as James Hannah, Lord Antrim's agent, apparently a relative of Sophia.