It includes the White Castle, a hillfort, situated on the edge of the Lammermuir Hills, two miles south of the village of Garvald, (55°54′32″N 2°37′14″W / 55.909°N 2.6206°W / 55.909; -2.6206, grid reference NT613686, OS Landranger No.67.)
Sir James Balfour Paul, Lord Lyon King of Arms, writing in 1905 stated that Whitecastle and Nunraw are the same place and that the lairds there were often referred to by one or the other of these territorial designations.
With the further fortifications three miles further east at Blackcastle and Greencastle it would have been ideally placed for a beacon to alert the tribe in case of an invasion from the south.
The hillfort was excavated over four years between 2010 and 2013 by Murray Cook and David Connolly of Rampart Scotland http://www.rampartscotland.co.uk/, and dates to the second half of the 1st millennium BC, though there was also evidence of limited Neolithic and Early Bronze Age activity.
In The Great Seal of Scotland a charter (number 1753) confirmed at Craigmillar Castle on 3 December 1566 by Mary, Queen of Scots (but originally written and signed at the Monastery at Haddington on 6 August 1556) mentions that following his father's death, Patrick Hepburn and his affairs were placed in the hands of his tutorix, Lady Elizabeth Hepburn, Prioress of the Monastery at Haddington.
In this charter Patrick is referred to as "of Whitecastle" but he is clearly mentioned as the son of his father John Hepburn of Beanston; and he is granted the lands of Slaid, [today spelt Sled] near Garvald, in Haddingtonshire.
He was dead by 15 January 1747 when a Sasine registered on that date referred to "Christian Anderson, relict of Francis Hepburn of Nunraw" (NAS:RS27/132/279).
The old building consisted of a long block running east to west, with two square towers to the north-east and south-west, and round stair-turrets in the two north-west angles.
In 1946 the building was acquired by the Cistercian brothers of Mount St. Joseph Abbey, Roscrea in County Tipperary in Ireland, their intention being to found a daughter-house.