On the feast day of St Michael, here are 10 facts about St Michael’s Mount, a tidal island in Mount’s Bay off the coast of Marazion, Cornwall.
The Mount is named for the Archangel (or Saint) Michael. He is the patron saint of fishermen, and there are legends dating back to the fifth century in which apparitions of St Michael guided fishermen to safety past the Mermaids trying to lure them onto the rocks. From there, the island became a place of pilgrimage and by the 11th century there was a monastery there.
Before Christianity, the island was called Karrek Loos yn Koos, which means, in Cornish, "the Grey rock in a wood". In even more ancient times, it might have been known as Ictis, and been a centre for trading Cornish Tin with the ancient Greeks.
After the English Civil War, John St Aubyn was appointed as Captain of the Mount. In 1659, he bought the island and his descendants have lived there ever since. At time of writing it is in the hands of Lord St Levan (family name St Aubyn) who inherited it in 2013 from his uncle. There are about 30 other residents, mostly people who work in and around the island. In Victorian times, there were more than 300 islanders.
Queen Victoria visited in 1846 with Prince Albert. In commemoration of the event, a brass footprint where she stepped was cast, which is still there today.
In 1588, it was from the Mount that the Spanish Armada was first spotted, and the first beacon lit in the chain to warn England of the threat.
There is a tropical garden. The warm air from the Gulf Stream and rocks and walls which release the sun’s heat late in the evening mean exotic plants and flowers can be grown here. The gardens are designed to be admired from above and are arranged in vertical terraces. Hence, if you want to work as a gardener here, you’ll need to learn to abseil first.
The legend of Jack the Giant Killer began here. According to Cornish legend, the Mount was built by the giant Cormoran, who would terrorise locals and steal their livestock. Until a boy called Jack who lived in Marazion set a trap. He dug a big hole and lured the giant into it by blowing a horn. After that it’s said that Jack joined King Arthur’s court and carried on killing giants.
Watching House of the Dragon? St Michael’s Mount is the location for Driftmark.
There are similarities between St Michael’s Mount and another tidal island across the Channel, Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy. Both are pyramid shaped tidal islands with abbeys on top. Legend has it that when the Normans conquered England in 1066, they were struck by the island's resemblance to their own Mont-Saint-Michel, and so they asked the Benedictine monks to build an equivalent abbey on it. However, it’s more likely that the abbey was already there, with the island having been given to the Benedictines by Edward the Confessor.
Most of the island was given to the National Trust by the St Aubyn family in 1954.
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