This church is named for the saint known as St. James the Greater, but architecturally it follows the example of St. James the Less Church (1846–1848) in Philadelphia, an American version of a thirteenth-century English parish church, St. Michael's in Long Stanton, Cambridgeshire. The design follows the dictates of the Ecclesiologists, a group proposing Gothic as the proper style for church design during the 1840s and 1850s. Bedford's St. James has a Gothic-arched bell gable in the plane of the facade, a steeply sloping multicolored slate roof, stepped buttresses on the side elevations, and interior and exterior walls of randomly laid stone, all characteristic of churches popularized during this era by architects John Notman and Richard Upjohn. Two stained glass windows were added over the years: the Lyon Memorial lancet window by Tiffany Studios that depicts the Resurrection with the symbols of a cross and lilies, and a window of the Nativity by William Willet. A two-story stone manse is next door at 309 S. Richard Street.