The site is now occupied by a Mission Hall, and most people passing along John's Lane East have no reason to suspect that this modest stretch of the city was once home to one of its oldest parishes, a building that was raised, collapsed into ruin, rebuilt, and demolished across the better part of seven centuries.

The parish of St. John the Evangelist dates to at least the twelfth century and, unusually for the medieval city, is thought to have been founded by a native Irishman rather than by the Anglo-Norman settlers who reshaped so much of Dublin's ecclesiastical landscape. Control of the church eventually passed to the Canons of the Holy Trinity, and in 1350 it was extended with a new chapel dedicated to St. Mary. Arland Ussher rebuilt it again in the early sixteenth century, and the chancel was extended in 1589. A steeple was added in 1639 with a peal of bells installed, but when the church fell into great decay by 1680 it was substantially rebuilt, and that steeple was not carried forward into the subsequent work. The final rebuilding, completed between 1766 and 1769 to designs by architect George Ensor and funded by the Irish parliament, produced a rectangular structure roughly 70 feet by 35 feet, with a classical portico of two columns facing east and the altar positioned to the west. Whether the columns were Doric or Corinthian remained uncertain even to later scholars, a period print of 1786 apparently offering no resolution. The parish was united with St. Werburgh's in 1877, the church closed the following year, and demolition came in 1884. What survived was scattered: three mural tablets, the pulpit, and some plate went to St. Werburgh's; a stained-glass window was relocated to St. Michan's; and a medieval breviary from the earlier church is held in the library of Trinity College Dublin. Henry Grattan, the celebrated eighteenth-century parliamentarian, was baptised here, and directly across the street, where a commercial premises later stood, Handel's Messiah received its world premiere in 1743.

There is nothing to see on the ground today, which is itself a reason to pay attention. The area around Fishamble Street and John's Lane East repays a slow walk: the street name alone points to the medieval fish market that once operated nearby, and the proximity to Christchurch Cathedral, which stood only a few yards to the south-west of the old church, gives a sense of how densely layered this part of the city once was. John Speed's 1610 map of Dublin marks the church as number 37, and John Rocque's detailed 1756 map shows both the church and its graveyard, making both maps useful companions for anyone trying to fix the site in the imagination.