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

42 Toberwine Street is a small, plain, two-storey stuccoed terraced house, one of a mirrored (handed) pair built around 1870. It is not listed, having been assessed as not meeting the criteria for listing and as being of neither architectural nor historic interest. It sits within a conservation area on the east side of Toberwine Street, with its front elevation facing roughly west.

The front elevation is asymmetrical and finished in recent lined render with plain quoins to the right (south) corner. To the right of the front is a timber-panelled door with a plain two-pane fanlight above. To the left is a Georgian-paned sash window with six-over-six panes, and there are two further matching sash windows at first-floor level. Window cills are painted stone.

The roof is gabled and covered in natural slate. To the front there is a small Velux window. There is a brick chimneystack to the north and a rendered stack to the south, along with a recently constructed rendered chimney to the right side of the ridge. Rainwater goods are a mix of cast iron and PVC.

The property has been completely renovated — apparently in the 1980s — and a large modern two-storey gabled extension was added to the rear at that time, along with a large gabled dormer. The extension has a shallow pitched roof and modern door and windows to its east and north faces. To the right of the extension, the rear elevation of the main part of the house has a window with a modern frame at ground-floor level and two more at first-floor level. The rear elevation is finished to match the front. To the right (north) of the large rear dormer there is a small Velux window.

The history of Toberwine Street — whose name derives from the Irish for "street of the sweet well" — suggests it represents the earliest area of settlement within the village of Glenarm. 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 does not appear to have been repaired as a residence, with his descendant Sir Randal McDonnell building a new residence on the other side of the river. Some historians suggest the old castle was occupied by tenants in the later 17th century in some repaired form, though Richard Dobbs makes no mention of it in his 1683 description of the village. The name "Toberwine" appears in the Antrim Papers as early as a lease of November 1672, with "Toberwine Street" mentioned explicitly in a lease of August 1709. John O'Hara's 1779 map of Glenarm — the earliest surviving plan of the village — shows the street fully developed on both sides, with the market and courthouse at the south-west end. No verifiable trace of the old castle is identifiable on that map, though the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of around 1830–35 record "the foundations of a very extensive old castle which stood at the centre of the town until a few years ago," suggesting some ruins survived into the early 19th century.

The 1833 valuation evidence indicates that most buildings 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: numbers 4–12 date from around 1840, while numbers 14, 20–34, 40–42, and 62 are post-1860, some replacing modest single-storey dwellings. The large three-storey former Antrim Arms Hotel and possibly its neighbour number 56 may have been standing in the early 1830s, though this is not certain.

For the specific site of numbers 40 and 42, the 1859 valuation records that it was then occupied by a relatively old, long single-storey dwelling in the occupation of one John Charles. This appears to have been demolished sometime after the mid-to-later 1860s, and the present pair of dwellings erected in its place.