Buck's sketch (Bodleian) 26 June 1727 (C43, DAS) shows the south wall of the nave and the buildings round the cloister (kitchen, hall entire, cellars under it, abbot's parlour at the end of the hall) still standing, ceilinged in oak (WARD).  Also a 2-arched gatehouse spanning the roadway (C43).
"The walls of the cloister, the kitchen, the hall entire, and under it the cellars, at the end of the hall the abbot's parlour, all the ceilings, well wainscotted with oak.... and a magnificent gatehouse just dropping."  (DAS, C43).

The south range was largely demolished in the mid- or late- seventeenth century (D1990).
By 1789 only the east window was left (DAS).

Sir Henry Willoughby built Risley Hall and the wall round it from Dale Abbey stone (C43 quoting COX79).  
The Jacobean cottages in Stanton have 16 mason's marks on them.
So have stones in a lock on the Erewash, and St Bartholomew's church, Elvaston (KERRY).

It was mentioned by John Byng in Torrington Diaries 1789 and Pilkington in View of Derbyshire 1789 (C43).  The latter said that some offices were still standing, converted to dwelling houses.  PREMONS says ‘pars monasterii habitabantur’ and in some windows there is painted glass with inscriptions (C43).

By the early 1800s there was nothing much left (WARD).

73 lines of John Edwards’ poem All Saints Church, Derby (1805) talk of the ruin and there is an engraving of the arch at the beginning of the 19th century;  
an inferior version of the engraving is on the title-page of the 3rd volume of Britton and Brayley’s Beauties of England and Wales 1802.  
Another view taken in 1806 is in G. J. Parkyns’ Monastic and Baronial Remains (1816) volume II.  
William and Mary Howitt’s Forest Minstrel  1823 has ‘A legend of Dale Abbey’.  
Dr Hall in Days in Derbyshire (1863), p. 258 quotes 3 verses about Dale by Richard Howitt, and has a 3rd sketch of the arc h signed J. Gresley.  This last also illustrates FOX68.  
Notts and Derby Notes and Queries (1892) has a poem ‘Dale abbey’ by Mr T.L. Tudor (C43).

In 1830 some buildings were converted into houses and barns, some with painted glass with inscriptions (DUGDALE).