It is rare to have a list of all the abbots in an abbey's lifetime but such a list has survived for St Mary’s Abbey. It is in the British Museum (ref. Cott. Vesp. E. 26), together with the Dale Chronicle (see later). The list is highly accurate (to the week during the years between 1233 and 1332) and records 19 abbots: it covers a period of 312 years, 6 weeks and one day. It was written in the early 16th century by a contemporary of the last two abbots, whose names were added later. Details of the first two abbots were taken from the Dale Chronicle, and many of the later data are taken from contemporary Visitation Reports. These are sometimes incomplete: there are records of the presence at St Mary’s of one Michael, a canon of Candida Casa (Whithorn Abbey), but not of the date; there is also a mention of one Geoffrey de Grevell, with no details.

Abbot number one:  Walter de Senteney
Abbot Walter was originally a canon of Newhouse Abbey, and had founded Easby Abbey in Yorkshire in 1151 or 1152. To start the abbey’s work he brought eight or nine canons with him from Newhouse, including John de Byford (son of Baldwin and friend of Peter Gausela, the founder of Newhouse Abbey), Hugh de Grimsby, Roger d'Alesby and William le Sores. It is possible that an early recruit to the abbey was Bertram de Grendon, whose body was eventually given to Dale Abbey by his brother William, thus cementing the family ties with the abbey. It is also recorded that William de Hagnaby, a Depedale Priory canon, became a Stanley Park canon; according to Professor Colvin, this record dates from 1289. The record must be a historical note, as it is hardly possible for a canon to be a Depedale canon in the late 1100s and still alive in 1289.

Abbot Walter ruled from January 1199  or 1200 to April 1230 or 1231 (probably the latter), ‘sancte recordationis’. However, all was not plain sailing: in 1212 the abbey was fined for forest offences. Conflict required his detective and reconciliation skills: in 1222 Abbot Walter received a papal mandate to inquire into the claiming of false privileges by Coventry and Lichfield diocese, together with the abbot of Combe and the archdeacon of Coventry, to the detriment of the archbishop of York, and two years later the abbey was given papal protection by Pope Honorius III, especially for its possessions in Ockbrook, Stanley and Depedale.