St John's Episcopal Church, Lothian Road, Edinburgh

St John's Episcopal Church, Lothian Road, Edinburgh

St John's is a Grade A listed building comprising a major perpendicular gothic church with later additions spanning the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The principal structure was designed by William Burn and built between 1816 and 1818. The sanctuary and chancel were added by Peddie and Kinnear between 1879 and 1882. A vestry and hall were designed by JM Dick Peddie and Forbes Smith and built in 1915-16. A Morning Chapel was added by W J Walker Todd in 1934-5.

The church is constructed of polished ashlar from Redhall quarry and comprises a distinctive composition: a flat-roofed square-plan tower to the west, a pitched-roofed nave with clerestorey, lean-to buttressed aisles, and a piend-roofed polygonal apse. The building features a base course and pierced parapet throughout. Gabletted buttresses and crocketted pinnacles punctuate the exterior, whilst windows are hoodmoulded pointed arches with perpendicular tracery. An undercroft projects to the south as a terrace and hall above a cloister arcade, and the 1916 chapel projects into a polygonal walled burial enclosure to the east.

The west elevation on Lothian Road is dominated by an advanced tower with decoratively buttressed corners. The main entrance is a Tudor-arched doorway flanked by seven colonnettes and fitted with a two-leaf timber storm door with gothic timber panel above and a two-leaf glazed inner door with timber tracery. Above stands a three-light window, and each face of the belfry has paired louvred windows beneath crocketted pinnacles and a pierced parapet. Three-light windows light the aisles in the outer bays, flanked by gabletted buttresses. A single-storey hall adjoins to the outer right, with a gothic timber panelled door in a square hoodmould to the left and a single window flanked by buttresses to the right.

The north elevation facing Princes Street spans eight bays. A two-leaf timber door with gothic decoration in a Tudor-arched surround, flanked by colonnettes with square hoodmould and carved label-stops, is positioned in the outer right bay. The outer left bay features decoratively corbelled niches with gothic canopies above. Six three-light windows light the aisle, flanked by gabletted buttresses in the intervening bays, with clerestorey windows to the nave above. A projecting crenellated vestry porch with crocketted corner buttresses projects from the outer left, its two-leaf timber panelled door set within a Tudor-arched surround.

The east elevation shows three tall three-light windows to the polygonal apse, flanked by a window to the right now lighting the vestry and the east window of the projecting 1935 chapel. The east elevation of the hall opens onto an east terrace, with a timber panelled door featuring cast-iron hinges set in a hoodmoulded Tudor-arched surround and flanked by buttresses.

The south elevation spans eight bays, with a decoratively panelled glazed timber door in a Tudor-arched surround in the outer left bay and a tripartite gothic niche above. Six three-light windows light the aisle, flanked by gabletted buttresses. A single-storey hall adjoins to the outer right, its six-bay elevation featuring single windows flanked by crocketted buttresses in each bay and a crenellated parapet. A fifteen-bay arcade beneath a stone-flagged terrace with crenellated parapet features chamfered gothic arches with blank shields above, flanked by buttresses. These openings contain windows and doors to shops and cafes to the left, originally intended as burial vaults.

The interior comprises a square entrance porch with an office to the right and stairs to the gallery to the left. The six-bay nave is flanked by aisles and features a nave arcade with slim clustered shafts, polychrome foliate capitals, and penitent figures at pier-heads, with heraldic crests above. Clerestorey wall shafts support gilded and painted plaster fan vaults and pendants, whilst the aisles have ribbed vaults. The choir and chancel feature Lierne ribs, canopied choir stalls, a pulpit, and oak panelling. A Caen stone reredos with tiled pictures enriches the chancel. The organ is positioned to the northeast. A gallery above the entrance is fitted with a carved wooden balustrade. Gothic and neo-Tudor marble memorials populate the aisles, including a bust of Dean Ramsay by Sir John Steel in the north aisle and a memorial to Gilbert Scott designed by the architect himself in 1867. A memorial to Mary Arbuthnot by John Flaxman dates to 1822. The church contains important stained glass throughout.

The Morning Chapel, furnished by Walker Todd in 1935, features a compartmented shallow vaulted roof of carved Scots oak with a cornice of angels' wings. Iron gates were designed by Ian Lindsay. A stained glass window is by James Ballantine II.

The hall is fitted with a dark varnished hammer-beamed roof, panelling, and timber reeded and panelled doors in Tudor-arched surrounds.

The churchyard, boundary walls, steps, railings, gatepiers, vaults, and monuments are integral to the setting. To the east of the church lies a dormitory and burial enclosure bounded by a high wall. The wall is ashlar-faced and crenellated to the exterior, rubble-faced to the interior, with crenellated gothic-panelled turrets to the corners. A chamfered Tudor-arched gateway with decorative hoodmould and two-leaf cast-iron gate provides access and contains memorials including those to Sir Henry Raeburn and Margaret Rutherford, mother of Sir Walter Scott. The Dean Ramsay Memorial to the northeast is a tall granite Celtic cross designed by Rowand Anderson in 1878, featuring Celtic bronze reliefs by Skidmore. Stone steps descend to a lower level where further important monuments stand in walled enclosures, including those of Sir William Forbes, the largest shareholder, and James Donaldson, founder of Donaldson's School for the Deaf. The walling features saddle-backed coping to coursed ashlar. Cast-iron railings run along a low boundary wall, and pyramidally-coped gothic panelled ashlar gatepiers mark the entrances. Arcaded vaults beneath Lothian Road were built between 1926 and 1930.