St James's (C of I) Parish Church, Novally Road, Drumawillan TD, Ballycastle, County Antrim

St James's Church of Ireland Parish Church is a single-storey Gothic Revival building dating from 1848, possibly designed by William Welland. It is a good and relatively understated example of early Victorian Gothic Revivalism, set close to the junction of Novally Road and Ramoan Road, with a graveyard to the north, south and east sides.

The church is roughly rectangular in plan, with a porch and aisle projection to the south, a chancel to the east, and a small vestry projection at the northeast corner. The walls are built in roughly squared, rock-faced rubble with dressed sandstone used for the openings, parapets, and quoins. Reducing buttresses punctuate all sides, with diagonal buttresses set to some of the corners. A sandstone string course runs at sill level, and sandstone is also used as coping for the bevelled base course. Almost all windows have pointed arch heads and stained glass.

The long, lean-to aisle projection covers the full length of the south elevation of the nave. At the western end of this projection is a gabled porch. The south-facing gable of the porch has a pointed arch doorway containing a timber studded door with strap hinges, set within a splayed moulded reveal. Above the doorway is a moulded sandstone drip stone with carved human heads as stops — the one to the left wearing a coronet, the one to the right depicted as a bishop with a mitre — both somewhat weathered. According to C. E. B. Brett, these heads are believed to represent the Earl of Antrim and Bishop Mant, though it is possible they were stock figures representing the clergy and nobility onto which local interpretation was later placed. The west face of the porch has a small pointed arch window, and there is an identical window to the east face. To the left of the porch on the aisle projection there is a pair of pointed arch windows, with two further pairs to the right.

The west elevation shows the west gable of the nave, with the side of the aisle projection to the south. The nave gable has a high-level pair of tall pointed arch windows, with a small roundel window directly above and a relatively small trefoil window near the gable apex. The gable is topped with a sandstone bellcote. A small pointed arch window is set into the side of the aisle projection.

The east elevation consists of the gabled chancel, with the side of the aisle projection to the left and the small lean-to vestry projection set back to the right. The chancel gable has a high-level grouping of three tall pointed arch windows, the central one being taller than the flanking two. The side of the aisle projection has a pair of pointed arch windows with a small quatrefoil above. The east face of the vestry projection has a pair of pointed arch windows. Immediately to the north of these is a small flat-roofed boiler house projection, which is a later addition, identifiable by its quoins of more reddish, roughly dressed sandstone. The south face of the boiler house has a panelled timber door and a small flat-arch window with a modern timber frame. The boiler house overlooks a sunken stone staircase which descends below ground level to a small flat-arch doorway with a timber-sheeted door set into the north face of the chancel.

The north elevation shows the chancel and vestry to the left and the nave to the right. The chancel has a single pointed arch window, and the vestry has a pair of small pointed arch windows. The nave has three pairs of pointed arch windows, each pair surmounted by a small quatrefoil. Between the second and third pairs from the left there is a doorway matching the one at the porch, but without a drip stone, with a small quatrefoil above it.

The steeply pitched roofs of the nave and chancel are slated, as are the gabled roof of the porch and the lean-to roofs of the aisle and vestry projections. Each of these roofs has sandstone parapets with small gable features at the ends. There are small finials to the gable of the porch and that of the chancel. Cast-iron rainwater goods are used throughout.

The churchyard is entered from the west, at the junction of Novally Road and Ramoan Road, through a modest pedestrian gate of plain wrought iron with slightly more decorative, though still simple, cast-iron pillars. A similar gate is set into the low rubble wall enclosing the churchyard to the southeast. A rubble wall also encloses the east side, with a hedge to the west. To the northwest there is a carriage gateway with square sandstone pillars having mainly bevelled corners and two-stage pyramidal caps, fitted with decorative cast-iron gates. Near the northwest corner of the site, close to the church itself, there are some mature trees.

This church was built in 1848 as a replacement for an earlier church that stood in the old Ramoan graveyard a short distance to the southwest. The building it superseded is believed to have originated in 1506, though it was replaced by a slightly smaller structure in 1812, which the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1838–39 describe as "a plain oblong edifice 1-storey high and slated… with an arched door on the west gable… 3 gothic windows on the south side and 1 large gothic window on the east gable."