St James the Less Church is the Anglican parish church of North Lancing, an ancient village which has been absorbed into the modern town of Lancing in the district of Adur, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. It was founded in the 12th century in the most northerly of the three settlements in Lancing parish, which has Saxon origins. The present building is mostly 13th-century in appearance, and structural work has been carried out several times since—particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the church was restored from a ruinous condition.