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Selskar Abbey () is a ruined Augustinian abbey in Wexford, Ireland. Founded in the twelfth century, the abbey's full name was the Priory of St Peter and St Paul.
The name is derived from Old Norse sel-skar, "Pinniped skerry."
There is a long-standing tradition that King Henry II spent Lent of 1172 at Selskar Abbey, where he did penance for the murder of Thomas Becket. It is unclear if there is any truth in the story, although Henry was in Ireland at the time, and Becket's murder, some fifteen months earlier, was still a subject of great controversy. Henry might well have felt that Selskar was the right place to make an appropriate gesture of penance.
In the early 1400s Ardcolm Church, Castlebridge, was appropriated to Selskar by the Bishop of Ferns, Patrick Barrett.
We have a glimpse of life in the abbey through a letter which John Topcliffe, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, addressed to Henry VIII in 1511. He complained that the monks who "time out of mind" had chosen their own Prior, had elected a "good blessed religious man" as Prior, but that the Abbot had turned him out.Ball, F. Elrington The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 John Murray London 1926 Vol.1 pp. 212-3 It is unclear why the Chief Justice, who was an Englishman without any obvious ties to Wexford, nor to the Augustinian Order, was so concerned about the affair, nor why he thought the King would be interested. The King's reply, if any, is not recorded.
The Abbey was reportedly sacked in 1649. Along with six other Wexford churches, it was destroyed following the surrender of the town to Oliver Cromwell that year. Cromwell ordered the bells of the abbey shipped to the arsenal at Chester, possibly with the intention of having them melted down for gun metal. Instead, the Dean of Liverpool purchased and removed them to the Old Church near River Street, Liverpool.
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