At the start of Southside Road and also bordered by Southside Place is the St John’s Church – more formally “the Episcopalian Church of St John the Evangelist”.

St John’s previous location had been in Church Street and the old church had eventually become Fraser’s Auction Mart (and now is a pub called Auctioneers). Research reveals that there has been TWO Churches called St John’s in Church Street, the original having been further north up the street towards the Old High . It had opened in 1801, and was only used for 4 decades before the second one took over in 1839.

In 1889 St Columba’s Mission Church was begun up in Southside Road, and was designed by Alexander Ross (he who also designed the Cathedral). In 1902/1903 the St Johns congregation moved from Church Street and took over that Mission Church. and Mr Ross was again commissioned to add a trancept and chancel. As a considerable amount of the Church Street building was dismantled, much of it was re-used in the extension to the Southside Road building.

Presumably there had once been a large garden between church and rectory – more recently the Old Rectory was sold off and a more modern manse built in the garden ground. St Johns is a bonnie wee church, with a quaint little (wooden) bell tower – which looks like a smaller, shorter version of the now long gone “fleche” on such as the Cathedral and Town Hall.

The double gates outside the church bear the dates "1903" and "1963" and were erected to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of the present church

The splendid stained glass windows behind the al tar came from the second St John’s in Church Street. St John’s most famous Incumbent was undoubtedly Dean Charles Fyvie, Rector from 1819 to 1850, whose diaries, most of which are in the National Library for Scotland, give a fascinating glimpse into Scottish life in his time.

“St John’s is the oldest Scottish Episcopalian congregation in Inverness. According to the records, the Reverend Hector Mackenzie, Minister of the Parish from 1683, was ‘a staunch upholder of Episcopacy, and declined to accept the new system (Presbyterianism), but continued to perform his duties as Parish Minister’. On 14 October 1691, Hector Mackenzie, along with his people, were extruded from the Parish Church. Thus began the history of St John’s, al though for many years following, they worshipped in secret. At the end of the hundred years’ persecution which followed the 1688 Revolution, Episcopalians met for a time in a small Meeting House on the Maggot. “