St John's Church: The Episcopalians Come Back
Why is it significant?
Take in the tall Gothic church at the corner of Princes Street and Lothian Road, with its pinnacled tower and long, delicate windows, like a small English cathedral parked at the end of the city's main street.
Key Facts
| Place | St John's Church: The Episcopalians Come Back |
|---|---|
| Address | Princes Street & Lothian Road, Edinburgh EH2 4BJ, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95000, -3.20650 |
| Part of Walk | Painted, Carved and Planted: Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens and the Mound |
| Generated | Generated |
Take in the tall Gothic church at the corner of Princes Street and Lothian Road, with its pinnacled tower and long, delicate windows, like a small English cathedral parked at the end of the city's main street. This is St John's, an Episcopal church, and its very existence is a quiet story about kings.
After 1689, when most Scottish bishops refused to swear loyalty to William of Orange in place of the exiled Stuart king James VII, the Episcopal Church was pushed to the margins. Many of its people were Jacobites, praying for the Stuarts in back rooms and lofts, and after the rising of 1745 harsh penal laws restricted their worship. Only in 1792, once the Episcopalians agreed to pray for King George III, were those laws lifted.
St John's, built between 1816 and 1818 to designs by William Burn, announced that Episcopalians were back in the respectable heart of the city. Picture the first congregations stepping in, gentlemen in tall hats and ladies in bonnets, into a church that would have been unthinkable for their grandparents. Step inside if it is open and tip your head back: the nave ceiling is a lace of Gothic plaster vaulting, and the windows hold a remarkable collection of nineteenth-century stained glass, glowing like a picture book of saints.
In the middle of the nineteenth century its most famous clergyman was Dean Edward Ramsay, a kind and witty man whose collection of Scottish anecdotes became a bestseller. Remember his name, because at the end of this walk you will meet a fountain that he publicly condemned as indecent. Even the most charming dean has his limits.
Around the church lie graves of Georgian and Victorian Edinburgh families, beneath a terrace that looks out over the traffic of Lothian Road. Now take the path down beside the church into the hollow below, where a second and much older church hides with its kirkyard: St Cuthbert's.