In the years immediately following the Suppression St Mary’s Abbey must have been a sad sight, its buildings stripped and bare. The Commissioners had made a loss of  £7 7s.6d. at the dissolution, but profited in 1540. The Chaddesden chantry survived till 1545, when it received a favourable report from the Commissioners: the priest kept hospitality and ministered to about 225 people, which was all the more valuable as the road to the parish church was often impassable in flood-time for four or five days together.

On 5TH July 1540 the Commissioners sold to Francis Pole ‘the grange then still in the tenure of Robt. Nesse, in Dale’, the lands called Sheperlande and Granland in Dale and tithes in Stanley, all of which had belonged to St Mary’s Abbey; there were reservations on this sale for 21 years at the rent of £5 1s.3d.. Robert Nesse had been the abbey’s bailiff and appears to have lived at Stanley Grange, which is only a short distance from Dale; this is probably the same grange. It appears again in a record of 1544 (according to one expert, 1554) of the grant in fee to Francis Po(o)le for £489 0s. 10d. of the site etc. of the late abbey of Dale, numerous closes and meadows in Dale (details in Dr Cox’s work of 1918), a grange called Okebank [=Ockbrook?] and lands in Elvaston, a coal mine in Stanley, certain fields in Dale and Ilkeston, a 60 acre wood called Hygherwood and other smaller woods in Dale, and a house and close in Dale parish in the tenure of John Pendylton; the record shows a grant in fee to Thomas Powtrell of West Hallam for £102 of Stanley grange with its appurtenances in Dale, Stanley and Spondon, in the tenure of Robert Nesse.

Francis Pole then alienated the lands to Sir John Port of Etwall, one of the justices of the King’s bench, and his son Sir John Port junior (founder of Repton School), whose daughter Dorothy married Sir George Hastings, fourth earl of Huntingdon. This comprised the manor of Dale, with all its appurtenances and 20 messuages, 30 tofts, one water-mill, one dovecote, one orchard, 4000 acres of land, 3000 acres of meadow, 6000 acres of pasture, 3000 acres of wood, 8000 acres of open land and bracken and 40s. of rent. Also the advowson of the church of Dale. This had a value of £16 2s.0d..

After the dissolution the village of Dale became a peculiar free from all episcopal control, but it was clearly a matter of some dispute. Anthony Pope and Nicholas Gover brought an action against Port, and legal disputes over the rectory and manor of Dale seem to have continued throughout the 16th century.