Village in the central valley of the Isle of Man, beside Tynwald Hill.

The Vale of St John's lies close to the centre of the Island, at the meeting of the principal roads between Douglas, Peel, Ramsey and the south. Its history is dominated by Tynwald Hill and the chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist beside it.

The annual Tynwald ceremony brought the officers of the Island and representatives of every parish to St John's. Robertson's account of the eighteenth-century ceremony records that each parish sent four horsemen. The clergy processed two by two, followed by the Bishop, Vicars General, Deemsters, sword-bearer, the Lord or his representative, Lieutenant-Governor, Clerk of the Rolls, the twenty-four Keys and the parish captains.

The chapel formed part of the same ceremonial landscape. The Manx Society's Records of the Tynwald and Saint John's Chapels preserved accounts of both the old chapels and the nineteenth-century replacement, together with a plan of Tynwald and the new chapel in 1849. Captain Grose's drawings of 1774 showed the earlier arrangement of the site.

St John's was also a fair centre. Robertson's list records two fairs there in May, another in July, and two in November. On Tynwald Day the gathering around the hill combined legislative ceremony with the much larger crowd attending the fair.

The Duke of Atholl's formal entry into the Island in 1736 was followed by a Tynwald at St John's, where Bishop Thomas Wilson preached before the court. The sermon was preserved with the later records of the chapel and hill.