St James's is a brown cobble church consisting of a 12thc. nave and chancel with a Perpendicular S nave arcade and W tower. The chancel was restored in 1890. The S doorway, reset in the aisle wall and covered by a modern (2000) porch, is 12thc. and contains an important figural tympanum described by Pevsner (1968) as 'barbaric and entertaining'. The chancel arch jambs and imposts are also 12thc., although the arch itself is later and steeply pointed. There is a small 12thc. window head set in the S chancel wall.

Keyser identifies the standing figure on the tympanum as an archbishop with his hand extended over an animal prostrated at the foot of the cross. For him the object above his head is 'probably the hand of the Almighty'. The upper figure on the sinister side he identifies as 'perhaps the Agnus Dei'. Stone found the iconography of this and similar tympana 'highly obscure'; a fact which he attributed to illiterate sculptors tending to muddle and distort the symbols. The only sign that admits of no doubt is the central cross. One possibility for the remainder depends on the identification of the smaller beast on the sinister side as a centaur; a senseless animal with the form of a man, used by the compilers of Bestiaries to symbolise people who behave like beasts, deceived by the allurements of the world (Baxter 1998, 36). If this is accepted, then their fate as prey stands in contrast to the care lavished on the sheep like creature on the dexter by the Good Shepherd figure. A tympanum with a cross alone in the centre is found at St John's, Duxford (Cambs).