Presbytery, St James' R.C. Church, High Street, Innerleithen

St James R.C. Church, built in 1881 by John Biggar, is a five-bay, buttressed church designed in the Decorated Gothic style. It features a steeply pitched roof and a lower chancel bay at the eastern end. The northwest corner has a four-stage, broach-spired tower, while to the east is a three-bay, two-storey gabled former presbytery. The church is constructed from snecked whinstone with ashlar dressings and includes a deep base course. Stepped buttresses support pointed-arch traceried windows, which have corbel-stopped hoodmoulds in the nave, and two windows with trefoils above the gables. The tower has stepped, angled buttresses, a semi-octagonal stair tower in the lower stages, trefoiled pointed-arch louvred belfry windows, a corbel table, and two tiers of lucarnes on the spire.

The windows feature diamond leaded glazing, and there are two-leaf boarded timber doors. The roof is covered with graded grey slates and clay ridge tiles, while stone skews have beaked skewputts and cross finials at the apexes. The rainwater goods are made of cast iron.

Inside, the church has a plain decorative scheme with a lofty timber-trussed roof supported by painted stone corbels, and a painted stone chancel arch. The seating consists of open-back pews, and there are later 20th-century additions at the west end that form a narthex, which incorporates relocated altar rails.

The former presbytery is a three-bay structure with advanced outer gables featuring tympanum quatrefoils and asymmetrical gables on the sides and rear. It has a canted lead-roofed window in the principal room and trefoil-headed window openings fitted with plate glass in timber sash and case windows. The presbytery also has stone skews with beaked skewputts and corniced, shouldered ridge stacks with plain clay cans. Inside, the principal room boasts decorative plasterwork, and there is a dog-leg stair with a cast-iron balustrade. The doors and timber shutters include pointed trefoil detailing.

The boundary walls and gatepiers consist of squared monolithic sandstone gatepiers adorned with carved crosses, alongside low whinstone walls capped with sandstone.