[1] It became one of the richest monastic foundations in England with grants from the crown and bequests from de Brus, other nobles and gentry and local people of more modest means.

The east end of the priory church was left standing with its great window forming a distinctive arch, a well-known landmark used as a symbol for Guisborough.

The east window was preserved by them as part of a Romantic vista adjoining their seat, Gisborough Hall, from which the priory takes its idiosyncratically spelled name.

In addition to the east window, surviving visible fragments of the complex include the lower courses of the west range, a vaulted undercroft, a gateway and a 14th-century dovecote still in use today.

Guisborough was well-established at the time of the priory's founding; the town's name refers to the fortified place of a Scandinavian called Gigr, who may have taken over a site established by the Anglo-Saxons or Romans who lived in the vicinity before the arrival of Vikings in the 8th and 9th centuries.

He passed them to his friend Robert de Brus, Lord of Skelton, one of the largest landowners in the north, owning more than 40,000 acres (160 km2) in Yorkshire alone.

[8] The gift included lands amounting to twenty carucates and two oxgangs (roughly equivalent to about 2,500 acres (10 km2)), churches, mills and other possessions, and grants from others.

The canons leased, bought and sold land and loaned money using property grants as collateral to benefit the priory's building fund.

Work was slowed by high costs and civil unrest in the early 14th century, when Scottish raiders repeatedly plundered the north of England.

[21] Its wealth was tapped by Archbishop Melton of York to make good his own losses in 1319, and in 1320 it had to take in refugees from monastic houses that had been forced to disperse to escape the raiders.

[24] The priory received substantial financial support from its patrons; in 1381 William, Lord Latimer provided funds to complete the north nave and donated £333 6s 8d (roughly equivalent to £1.6 million today) for a new belfry.

He left the priory cattle from his manor at Ugthorpe, bequeathed a range of religious items, and made arrangements for his body to be interred there on his death.

[19] A second survey carried out by the king's commissioners, Thomas Legh and Richard Leyton, provided for the final suppression on charges of a lack of quality of religious life.

[27] The strength of feeling was recorded in a letter from Lord Conyers and Sir John Bulmer to Thomas Cromwell: "On Sunday, 11th  July [1539], at Gysburn in Yorkshire, when the parish priest was declaring the articles [of dissolution] directed by the King to the Archbishop of York, one John Atkeynson alias Brotton came violently and took book forth of the priest's hands, and pulled it in pieces.

He deplored the profane uses to which it had been put: I have seen with my own eyes broken pillars and pedestals of this august pile desecrated to the vile uses of gateposts, stands for rainwater casks, and stepping-stones over a common sewer.

I have beheld with sorrow, shame, and indignation, the richly ornamented columns and carved architraves of God's temple supporting the thatch of a pig-house.

[32] John Walker Ord casts doubt on the story, noting an account published a few decades afterwards stated that the workmen came from France and does not mention Chaloner's travels in Italy.

[27][40] It remains the property of Lord Gisborough; English Heritage is responsible for maintaining the ruins, while day-to-day running is managed by Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.

Elsewhere on the site, the outline of the cloister is visible but is largely unexcavated, while the ruins of the west (or cellarer's) range constitutes the largest area of other remains above ground.

A similar pair of pinnacles top the main gable, flanking a window of unusual design; a bracket projects from the lower lobe to support a statue (no longer present), possibly of the Virgin Mary, to whom the priory was dedicated.

The eastern bay of the presbytery was divided into several chapels and the remnants of parclose screens are visible on the main aisle's north and south responds.

[48] Although it was destroyed during the Reformation along with the priory, it was revived in 1949 by Father Arthur Mercer, Guisborough's first Roman Catholic parish priest for 400 years, and is housed in the town's St Paulinus Church.

[55] The structure consists of a single large round-headed archway on the outer side with two smaller arches of different sizes, both deeply rebated to accommodate doors, a few metres to the south.

The site was occupied in Anglo-Saxon times by at least one structure, possibly a timber-framed church[58] or boundary wall, indicated by a number of postholes.

It was constructed in the Romanesque style with twin aisles either side of the nave and a single tower at the west end, aligned with the main axis of the church.

[59] In the late 19th century, Margaret Chaloner, wife of the first Lord Gisborough, laid out formal gardens of a typical late-Victorian and Edwardian design with elaborate bedding schemes and gravelled paths.

In 1908, the pond was the scene of an elaborate water tableau organised by Lady Gisborough to raise funds for the restoration of St Nicholas' Church.

A grant issued by Stephen de Meynell in the reign of Henry I records the donation of the hamlet of Scarth to enable the priory to establish a cell for habitation by a single monk or canon.

A number of features were discovered, including a stone coffin containing the skeleton of a tall man thought to be Robert de Brus, the remnants of a monumental shrine and painted roof bosses.

[66] The remains of 47 people – 21 men, 17 women, 6 children and 3 of undetermined gender – were discovered, some of whom had been buried with grave goods including a gold finger ring and jet crosses.