Set in woodlands within the North York Moors National Park, it is represented today by the best preserved and most accessible ruins among the nine houses of the Carthusian Order, which existed in England in the Middle Ages and were known as charterhouses.

On its founding, Thomas Holland stipulated that the monks were to pray for the king, queen and several members of the royal family, and for himself and his heirs, and many others including John and Eleanor Ingelby.

[4] Nicholas Love, prior of Mount Grace, succeeded in creating a link between the priory and the Lancastrian administration, in part by submitting his "Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ" to Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, Henry IV's chancellor, in support of the archbishop's campaign against Wycliffism, and by granting Arundel confraternity in the spiritual benefits of Mount Grace in exchange for his provision of material benefits.

Some of the monks had (in 1534) attempted to avoid taking the oath of supremacy but, after they were imprisoned, the last prior, John Wilson, handed the keys over to Henry VIII's representatives.

In December 1539 the brothers were awarded pensions totalling £195 – £60 plus the house and chapel called the Mount for the prior, £7 for each of eight priests and small sums for eighteen.

[4] The dissolution of Mount Grace, and life in the priory in the preceding years, is vividly reimagined by Lucy Beckett in her 1986 novel The Time Before You Die.

Except for the singing of the liturgy and conversation "on grave subjects" during a weekly three-hour exercise walk, Carthusians are silent, and their diet is strictly vegetarian.

[10] After the dissolution, the ruins of the guest-house of the priory were incorporated into Mount Grace House: a seventeenth-century manor—a rare building of the Commonwealth period— built by Thomas Lascelles,[11] later converted into an important example of the Arts and Crafts movement.