 St Margaret's was founded in 1867 as a mission church by Father John Comper, one of the first followers in Scotland of the Oxford Movement.Comper was at the time rector of St John's, Aberdeen's oldest Anglican congregation.Comper felt that the poorer areas of Aberdeen were not being reached by the Church and felt obliged to respond, firstly in 1863 by founding St Margaret's Convent on the Spital and then the Gallowgate church.