It is said that the parish was not as wealthy as other convents in the Provincia de Bulacan during that time and that it was exempted from its fees to the Augustinian Province in the Philippines located at the San Agustin Church, Intramuros, from 1640 to 1704.

The pointed arch shaped pediment (resembling a minaret), on the other hand, is richly ornamented with carvings of cherubs, saints and other embellishments surrounding the oculus or rose window.

Attached to left of the façade is the five-storey bell tower with a quadrilateral base and octagonal upper levels and topped by a cone-shaped dome.

A fiesta for horse lovers is the popular two-day celebration called "Pintakasi ng mga Caballero" held before New Year's Eve in Plaridel, Bulacan.

Its main attraction, held on December 29, is a colorful parade of cocheros, jockeys and other equine aficionados, followed by a tilbury race (horse-drawn chariots for two), whose participants include movie stars (particularly members of the clan of the late former Bulacan Governor Jose Padilla, I), luminaries of the province and government officials.

Multitudes of devotees, who are joined by tourists, flock to Plaridel every year either to witness or participate in this colorful ritual in honor of San Tiago, or St. James the Apostle, who has been depicted as a horse rider.

His image, portrayed riding on a white horse trampling upon pagan figures, is brought in a procession from its "home" in Barangay Sipat and transferred to the Parish Church.

Fiesta organizers dub the ritual preceded by an early morning mass on December 29 at the chapel of Barangay Sipat as, "the traditional salubong."

Featured are race studs and the patient horses of caritelas and tilburies with their owners seeking blessing during the translacion or transfer of their patron saint.

The procession is called salubong because San Tiago's image tailed by groups of faithful including elderly women wearing kimona’t saya and buntal hats performing a ritual dance is met by the patron's other devotees halfway from Sipat to Plaridel Parish Church, in the town's poblacion.

according to a local book of the town's history, the original image of St. James on a white horse brought to Plaridel (then Quingua) by the Spaniards in the 1800s was left in the care of the family of Bernardo Sampana a rebel heathen of Sepoy ancestry who became a Christian convert.

Then the Sampanas were ordered by the friars to turn over the said image to the possession of the owners of the Bahay na Bato in Barrio Sipat (which was renamed Santiago), because of the townsfolks' claim that the family was allegedly practicing sorcery.

He was ordered killed by Herod Agrippa, King of Judea in 41 A.D. A history book of Philip Van Ness says the tomb of St. James was found in Northern Spain in 718 A.D. Thirty years after that, a war between the Spaniards and the Moors broke out.

The apparition gave life to the demoralized Spanish soldiers and led them to victory over the Moors, who in turn were bedazzled by the blinding image of St. James.