Mountpottinger Methodist Church, Albertbridge Road, Belfast, County Antrim

Mountpottinger Methodist Church is a large, well-preserved double-height red-brick Gothic Revival Methodist church built around 1890, located on the north side of Albertbridge Road east of Belfast city centre, on the corner with Templemore Avenue in the townland of Ballymacarret. A two-storey flat-roof extension was added to the rear in 1957. The church has been listed since 1986 and continues to operate as a Methodist place of worship.

The building has a T-shaped plan and sits on a corner site, set back from the street. The roof is pitched natural slate with raised stone verges and cross finials to the gable. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods run on a projecting eaves band over a Lombardic-style frieze. The walls are Flemish-bonded red brick with slender buttresses featuring masonry offsets and decorative stone pinnacles to the principal elevation.

The principal elevation faces south and is gabled with a central breakfront. This breakfront carries a decorative frieze of terracotta panels framed by a sandstone string course between floors, with Lombardic and castellated detailing flanking the bays. The centrepiece is a pair of entrances set within twin triple-order Gothic sandstone porticos, each accessed via three stone steps. The porticos feature semi-engaged colonnettes arranged in groups of three with carved Gothic mouldings, finials and pinnacles. The original diagonally timber-sheeted double-leaf doors are retained, with decorative wrought-iron strap hinges and cusped heads containing leaded and stained glass panels. The south gable above has a geometric rose window flanked by single lancets, all with decorative Gothic hood moulds, stone pinnacles and fleur-de-lis finials. The flanking bays of the main elevation have paired lancets with diminutive oculi to the spandrels, continuous hood moulds and carved finials.

Windows throughout are a variety of leaded and stained glass lancets. At the east and west elevations they are arranged in groups of three to each floor; those at first-floor level are pointed-headed with continuous hood moulds. The west elevation is four sets of triple windows wide, with a paired cusped lancet to the far right, stepped at sill level and surmounted by an oculus and a heavy projecting sandstone Gothic canopy on corbel brackets. The east elevation mirrors this arrangement, with a paired lancet to the far left and the right gable recessed and partially concealed. The left gable has a tripartite window at first-floor level in which the central opening is taller, surmounted by a vented oval opening at the gable and flanked by blind square-headed openings. At ground floor the left gable has seven leaded and stained glass timber-casement windows, the central one being wider than the rest.

The north rear elevation is fully abutted by the 1957 two-storey flat-roof extension, which is of little architectural interest in itself. It has irregularly arranged square window openings and an original double-leaf timber-panelled door to its west elevation; the north elevation of the extension has three large openings at first floor and a single window to the right at ground floor. Although a modern addition, the 1957 extension does not compromise the integrity or proportions of the original church, and its own interior is similarly well preserved in a typical 1950s style, adding a degree of additional architectural interest.

The interior retains much of its original late Victorian Methodist character, including pews, hardware and a church organ built in 1904 by Alfred Hunter and Son, a successful London-based firm of organ builders.

The building is enclosed by its original cast-iron railings with fleur-de-lis detailing, original gates to the south and west, and decorative gate piers. These boundary elements are included within the extent of the listing. There is an enclosed yard to the rear on the east side. The church shares group value with the nearby Mountpottinger Presbyterian Church.

The history of Methodist worship on this site dates to the 1830s, when two Methodist congregations were based on the nearby Newtownards Road, on the site now occupied by the Masonic Hall. By around 1880 those buildings were considered unsuitable for the growing congregation. A new site was acquired on Albertbridge Road, and in 1887 one of the congregations made a symbolic march from their former church to the new building, which was formally opened on 19 June 1887. The church first appears in the Annual Revisions for the Albertbridge Road that year, valued at £160 on completion. A Lecture Hall, valued at £12, was added between 1897 and 1905. In 1906, when the Pottinger Ward was first assessed separately from the rest of central Belfast, the church's valuation was reduced to £120. The church and hall together were valued at £280 in the first general revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935. During the Belfast Blitz of 1941, the church escaped major damage, despite severe destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road and Albertbridge Road during the bombing raids on the shipyards. By the second revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1956, the combined value of the church and hall had risen to £665 due to inflation; this was reduced to £532 under the 1957 Rent and Valuation Act. The 1957 red-brick flat-roof extension replaced the former lecture hall, and by 1960 the combined value of the buildings had risen to £600, a figure maintained through to the end of the revaluation period in 1972.