St Peter's RC Church

This handsome church was built in 1907! The priest responsible for building it, and its first Rector, was a well known poet called John Gray. He had been a close friend of Oscar Wilde, and the suggestion was that the "Portrait of Dorian Gray" was based on him.

John Gray had decided later in life to enter the priesthood. He was sent first of all to St Partick's Church in the Cowgate as curate. His most important supporter and life-partner was a Jewish millionaire, Marc-André Raffalovich. Raffalovich moved to Edinburgh, and bought a house in the city which became a regular meeting salon for the artistic and celebrated of Edinburgh culture. Most authorities reckon that - although Gray acted as co-host at the salon, and Raffalovich gave enormous sums of money to build St Peter's for his friend - their relationship became platonic when Gray entered the priesthood.

One exceedingly non-Edinburgh event took place here in 1935, when a sectarian mob rose up in anti-Catholic protest. Missiles were thrown, buses were overturned, and the police made the only decision they could - a baton charge into the hundreds of angry Protestants determined to disrupt the Roman Catholic Religious Congress being held in normally peaceful Morningside.