Selsey Abbey

Selsey Abbey stands where the old parish church of Church Norton meets the Sussex coast, just north of modern Selsey. The site once held the first cathedral of the South Saxons, founded in AD 681 by St Wilfrid on land given by King Æðelwealh. Wilfrid arrived from Northumbria during his years of exile and brought Christian teaching to a region still partly pagan. His biographer Stephen of Ripon wrote that Wilfrid freed 250 slaves on the estate and baptised them as his first act. The historian Bede records that a small group of Irish monks led by Dicul already lived nearby at Bosham but had made little progress. Later, Cædwalla, a West Saxon prince in exile, befriended Wilfrid and promised to obey him spiritually if Wilfrid would act as his counsellor. The abbey became the centre of Christian life in Sussex and remained so for nearly 400 years. After Wilfrid left for the north, the see passed to Winchester and then back to Sussex, with twenty-two bishops serving until the Norman Conquest. In 1075 the Council of London ruled that bishoprics must be based in cities, so the see moved to Chichester. Archaeologists have found a 10th-century bronze belt tab and fragments of Wilfrid’s palm cross near the old church mound. The cross’s carving resembles that on the Bewcastle Cross, suggesting Wilfrid brought northern craftsmanship to Sussex. Bishop William Reade, who died in 1382, asked to be buried before the high altar of the old church. Today the abbey’s remains lie beneath the fields around St Wilfrid’s Chapel in Church Norton. Visitors walk past the 13th-century parish church to the raised mound where Wilfrid’s community once stood. The site overlooks the flat coastal plain where the old cathedral may once have faced the sea. Local legend once claimed the abbey sank beneath the waves, but historians now place it on dry land. The quiet churchyard and low earthworks give little hint of the power this place once held.