St Michael's Mount

St Michael's Mount, small circular granite island, south-west England, located in Mount's Bay, east of Penzance, Cornwall, about 350 m (1,150 ft) offshore and approachable on foot at low tide. The island rises to about 100 m (330 ft), on top of which is a spectacular ancient castle and monastery.

As early as the 4th century bc the island was known as a trading port, exporting Cornish tin. In the reign of Edward the Confessor it was given to the monastery of Le Mont-St-Michel in Normandy; they built a priory on St Michael's Mount in 1144, and around this time it became a popular place of pilgrimage. However, there is an independent tradition of a vision of the archangel Michael on the island in about 500. A causeway was built to the island by William Morton in 1427.

In 1473 the island and its now fortified monastery were captured by the Lancastrian Earl of Oxford, only to be besieged and recaptured by Edward IV. In 1497 it became a base for the pretender Perkin Warbeck. During the Reformation the island reverted to the Crown, later to be sold by Queen Elizabeth I to the Earl of Salisbury. It also briefly provided a haven for the future Charles II. St Michael's Mount was sold to the St Aubyn family in 1659 and retained by them until it was given to the National Trust in 1954. Population (1991) 25.