The church was listed as a Category 1 building on the Heritage New Zealand register on 6 June 1985.

[2] The first chapel was started in November 1823 and opened some six months later, but this was not built on the site of the present church.

The second chapel, which was started some time early in 1829, was by tradition built on the site chosen by the redoubtable Hongi Hika, then the paramount chief of the Ngāpuhi.

[citation needed] When the Mission Station was disbanded in 1848 this chapel fell into disrepair with the result that a new church was built on the same site in 1878.

Tradition has it that after his martyrdom in AD 42, the body of St James was placed in a boat without sail or rudder which drifted onto the Spanish coast.