Sinningthwaite is 1.5 SW of Bilton-in-Ainsty and about 8 miles W of York. The farmhouse and the range of old and modern farm buildings to its north are on the site of the Cistercian nunnery of Sinningthwaite, founded here around 1160 and dissolved in 1535 (VCH Yorks. III, 176). The principal Romanesque survival is the doorway to the present-day farmhouse in its N wall, originally one of the claustral (refectory) entrances. This may have been re-assembled as the bases are at different heights, but it otherwise appears to have its integrity intact. In the S wall of the farm building opposite 17 pieces of reset ex-situ sculpture were found, arranged in several groups, together with several loose pieces of sculpture.

VCH Yorkshire III, 176, says: 'Sinningthwaite Priory, in Bilton-in-Ainsty, was founded about 1160 by Bertram Haget, who gave the site, and the gift was confirmed by his overlord, Roger de Mowbray, who at the same time confirmed other gifts made to the nuns by Geoffrey Haget the founder's son, when they received his sister. From Gundreda Haget, another daughter of the founder, the nuns received the advowson of the church of Bilton.'

Leach and Pevsner, 2009, 121, say that 'nothing remains but its refectory range, incorporated as the rear wing of the old farmhouse. In the N side a re-set doorway with one order of leaf capitals and one arch in which enriched trellis overlies a roll moulding. Leaf motifs in the spandrels. To the r. of ths doorway are two smaller blank arches, part of the laver. At first floor, outlines of tall round-arched windows - blocked c. 1500... the line of a moat can still be traced.'

Spelling in VCH is 'Sinningthwaite", but the occupier in 1996, Mr Harold Rawlings, spelt it as Pevsner and the OS. The farmer at this time was retired. He and his sons had set various fragments in the walls, having discovered them as they made alterations and 'tidied the place up'. He said they had found (human) bones when making the foundations for the large barn at the N end of this range of buildings; also that the stables (disused) which run N-S from near the house were known as 'The Cloister'.

On revisiting the area in 2014, it was found that the Rawlings family have converted some of the buildings into holiday accommodation and that further renovations are expected. The present condition of the reset sculptural fragments has not been checked; the doorway is untouched.

The doorway opens onto a passage which passes straight through the building and opens onto a lawn on the S side. The passage has the living quarters on the R (ie. W) and scullery, lofts on the L, in the manner of a vernacular farmhouse. The original position of the doorway is uncertain. Its precise relationship to the bay-and-a-half of blank arcading was not examined in detail. (See discussion in Nichols 1982).

The second order here is unique - at least in Yorkshire. It is not a continuous row of a moulding, but a series of interlocking folded squares. Something like it is seen at Askham Bryan and Thorpe Salvin, both of which doorways have free-standing chevron mouldings. Askham Bryan also has similar foliage fans in spandrels. The label-stops might be compared to those of the chancel doorway at Healaugh, and also the nave doorway at Moor Monkton.