White Abbey

White Abbey is a house dating back to the 17th century, with later additions and alterations from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. It is constructed of grey gritstone with a graduated stone slate roof. The house is two storeys high and has five first-floor windows over four bays. Quoins define the corners. A 20th-century door is set within a sawn stone surround with a hoodmould, marking the entrance to the second bay. To the right of the door is a four-light stone mullion window with a hoodmould, alongside a two-light wooden mullion window, likely in the position of a former blocked doorway, and a three-light wood mullioned window. All window sills have been lowered. To the left of the entrance door, a tall wooden mullioned window is set within an architrave on both the ground and first floors. The remaining first-floor windows include a three-light and a four-light recessed chamfered mullion window, a two-light window with a wooden mullion, and a three-light mullion window. The roof features bulbous kneelers, gable copings, three tall corniced ridge stacks (one at each end and in line with the blocked doorway), and an eaves stack to the left of the present entrance. The rear of the building has two projecting, parallel-roofed service wings with four-pane sash windows. The right return displays two small, square, chamfered openings on the gable of the front range. Inside, the central living room contains a large 18th-century fireplace with a flat lintel positioned in alignment with the blocked doorway. Two ceiling beams display scarfed joints in front of the fireplace, indicating the former location of a timber bressumer that would have supported a timber-framed firehood in the earliest phase of the house. A section of early post-and-panel partition remains at the top of the 20th-century staircase. A small fireplace with a roll-moulded surround is located to the left of the current front door, while an elaborate fireplace with bolection moulding and a cornice is found in the far left bay. 19th-century features include a large cooking fireplace with a chamfered sawn stone surround in the rear wing kitchen and a stone staircase linking the kitchen to the right gable fireplace. The left-hand rear service room incorporates a larder with stone salting slabs and a stone floor with a drain. The gable fireplace on the front, far right, has a 19th-century wooden surround that incorporates reused 17th-century carved details and likely contains 17th- to 18th-century Delft tiles. The house was formerly known as Trout Beck. The local author Haliwell Sutcliffe renamed the house when he lived there from the early 20th century until his death in 1932.