Dr. Adam Clarke Memorial Methodist Church, Heathmount, Portstewart, Co. Londonderry, BT55 7AP

Dr. Adam Clarke Memorial Methodist Church is a free-standing Gothic Revival Methodist church built between 1859 and 1861 to designs by the Newry and Belfast-based architect William Joseph Barre (c.1826–1867), with construction carried out by Joseph Johnston of Cookstown. It stands on an elevated corner site at the junction of Heathmount and Upper Heathmount in Portstewart town centre, overlooking the Irish Sea and directly adjacent to Portstewart Presbyterian Church. The building is listed together with its gate pillars.

The church is built of random quarry-faced blackstone rubble (uncoursed basalt) with sandstone dressings, and follows a cruciform plan with transepts to the north and south, a porch to the southwest, a chancel to the east, and a vestry with a modern extension to the northeast. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles, raised stone verges, and decorative Gothic gablets to the kneeler stones. Gothic ashlar pinnacles topped with crockets flank the transept gables. Rainwater goods are plastic. Walls are supported by buttresses and diagonal buttresses that rise to sandstone offsets.

The windows are the building's most elaborate feature. The transepts and west gable contain triple or quadruple geometrical cusped-tracery sandstone windows with leaded lattice casements and hood moulds with carved stops. The chancel's east window is a leaded and stained glass triple bar-tracery window. The nave is lit by paired cusped-headed plate tracery windows with quatrefoils. All windows have voussoirs, sandstone surrounds, and chamfered sills.

The principal elevation faces south. At its centre is the gabled transept with a three-light geometrical cusped-tracery window. To the right is a further tracery window, and to the left projects a gabled entrance porch containing a pointed-headed timber-sheeted door set in a splayed sandstone reveal, approached by two stone steps with modern metal handrails. The west elevation carries a four-light geometrical bar-tracery window. The north elevation presents the gabled transept at its centre with a triple geometrical bar-tracery window; to the right is a leaded and stained glass tracery window, and at the re-entrant angle stands the single-storey vestry. The vestry has a square-headed bipartite mullioned window to its west elevation and enclosed stone steps to a basement accessed via a battened timber door. It has been extended to the east in blackstone rubble with a slated roof, a rendered chimneystack to the gable, and a modern timber entrance door in a sandstone surround; a single-storey flat-roof extension abuts it to the right. The east elevation is abutted by the lower chancel, which has a three-light tracery window and cusped-headed lancets with voussoirs to left and right cheeks.

The church is set in a largely residential area. The grounds are lawned on three sides with concrete pathways and are enclosed by a roughcast rendered wall with rendered coping. Square sandstone and blackstone gate piers with pointed caps support wrought-iron gates to the south and west, though those to the south have flat rather than pointed caps. A blackstone rubble wall with stone coping defines the northern boundary. Three-storey modern apartment buildings and a detached late 20th-century two-storey dwelling stand to the north.

The church was erected as a memorial to Dr. Adam Clarke (c.1760–1832), a Methodist theologian with deep connections to this part of County Londonderry. Born in the parish of Kilcronaghan, he moved to Ballyaghran parish as a young man. A firm supporter of John Wesley — whom he met during one of Wesley's many visits to Ireland — Clarke opposed a Calvinist interpretation of salvation, though he attracted controversy among fellow Methodists for his views on the divinity of Jesus Christ. His most celebrated work was his commentary on the Bible, which took him forty years to complete and ran to approximately 6,000 pages, recognised at the time as one of the largest scholarly undertakings attempted by a single person. Clarke died of cholera in 1832. The memorial church was erected on land he had himself purchased with the intention of building a retirement home, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

The foundation stone was laid in September 1859 and the church opened on 4th July 1861. When completed it was a striking and eclectic design — Barre was known as "the evangelist of the decorated Gothic" — featuring Gothic pinnacles, battlements, flying buttresses, a multi-angled bartizan, and a Scots Baronial tower. Architectural historian Alistair Rowan later described it as Barre's "most jagged Gothic design … unfortunately now shorn of all its power." The church was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1861, where the Methodist chapel and yard were valued at £35. It does not appear on Ordnance Survey mapping until the third edition of 1904, where it is shown as an oblong-shaped building simply labelled "ch."

In December 1884 a storm blew down several of the pinnacles and their supports, leaving the building in a scarred state. No restoration was attempted for two decades. In 1914 the decision was taken not to repair the damage but to strip away all remaining pinnacles, buttresses, the bartizan, and the Scots Baronial tower entirely. This resulted in the simplified Gothic form visible today, which retains a Gothic character but lacks the eclectic and dramatic features that defined Barre's original design. These alterations are considered to detract from the building's architectural interest.

Approximately a decade after this simplification, the interior underwent a complete renovation carried out by Belfast-based architect James John Phillips (c.1841–1936), one of his final contracts before retirement. Around 1955 a new manse was added, and the interior was redecorated again, with the work said at the time to have "greatly enhanced the value and appearance of the property," the chancel in particular giving "an atmosphere of reverence in worship." The church was listed in 1977 and continues to serve the Methodist congregation of Portstewart.