[4] He converted the priory buildings into a residence which remained within his family until 1684, when it was bought by Sir Ambrose Phillipps, a wealthy lawyer, who also built nearby Garendon Hall.

[6] Ambrose constructed a new house in the Tudor-gothic style, known as Grace Dieu Manor, 300 yards (270 m) south of the priory ruins.

The March Phillipps de Lisle family owned the house until 1933, although their main residence was at the Hall they built at the former Garendon Abbey.

Following the death of two of its heads in quick succession, the family needed to reduce its expenditure and so in 1885 moved out of Garendon and into Grace Dieu Manor.

In 1964 Garendon Hall was demolished and the family returned to Grace Dieu for a final time, selling the house within a decade.

Many of the sightings tend to refer to white or grey apparitions, robed, with no hands or feet, hovering or gliding above ground level and appearing on the opposite side of the road to the priory, in the vicinity of an old 'bus shelter.

[12] Paul Devereux refers to the Grace Dieu phenomenon in his 1982 book, Earth Lights: Towards and Explanation of the UFO Enigma, and sets out his theory that such manifestations are wrought by unusual electromagnetic fields associated with fault areas which interfere with the normal cycles of the atmosphere.

[citation needed] However, whilst this may have been the case for many Christian foundations during the Anglo-Saxon period (the nearby parish church at Whitwick, for example, would almost certainly date back to an Anglo-Saxon origin, intentionally sited in a sacred place, above a natural spring) it is probable that the link between the much later foundation of Grace Dieu Priory and a site of possible pagan significance occurs more by co-incidence.