St Micheal’s Mount

St Micheal’s Mount is the smaller version of its sister monastery in Normandy and a lovely half day visit. The setting is gorgeous, with a causeway linking the island to the mainland at low tide, there are beautiful gardens and a hodge podge of medieval and gothic revival sections of the castle itself. It is well maintained by the National Trust.

My Experience

Friday was, according to the Met Office, going to be brighter with just a 10% chance of rain. We had a fantastic cooked breakfast before leaving our hotel – it was a shame we missed yesterdays! The RandomNumberGenerator gods were having their usual fun and the 10% chance or rain each hour meant about 3 hours of alternately light and heavy drizzle.

We drove to Marazion car parks and walked the short distance to catch the boat across to St Micheal’s Mount for our visit. There was a constant stream of boats ferrying people backwards and forwards to the island and 5 minutes later we were on the quayside.

Once we’d gone through the usual covid warnings and NT check in we were free to wander so we headed up to the the castle. From looks this was an authentic medieval castle that had been remodelled, probably by the Victorians. There were also several WW2 pillboxes on the shoreline.

The island was originally gifted to the Benedictine monks of Mont St Michel after the Norman Conquest but then passed, into lay hands after the Wars of the Roses. The current owners are descended from Colonel John St Aubyn, a Parliamentary commander in the English Civil War.

We walked up the steep path to the castle and it is the first place we’ve been to for months that was actually busy. There were a couple of gun batteries before the castle entrance and then we went into the castle itself. Inside were some excellent exhibits – weapons and armour the family had collected from around the world, plenty of personal family history items and some restored medieval rooms. There were NT guides in each room and it was a lot less formal and stuffy than some of the NT places we’ve visited.

There was a pause on the tour to walk around another terrace of battlements but I got the impression these were very much for effect, looking like the Fisherman’s Bastion in Budapest. There were nice views down to the terrace but it was difficult to take pictures because of the rain and the sheer volume of other people.

Once we had been through the castle we then started on the part Deb was looking forward to, the gardens. We’d seen the extensive terracing from the castle walls and splashes of colour through the mist and rain, which luckily stopped for the whole time we were in the gardens. I have no idea of the plants we saw but lots were pretty and they were incredibly colourful and sculptural. The whole shore side of the island seemed to be cultivated and covered with plants.

There was a set route to walk around (due to the narrowness and steepness of the paths) and the number of people did make it seem a bit production line at times. Even though I’m not a plant buff the sheer colour and vibrancy was enough to almost make me forget the weather and expense of this Cornish break. Almost. We spent longer walking around the gardens than inside the castle and I left Deb to it so I could take some more photos of the mount itself in the better light.

The tide was now out so I walked across the causeway, past the snaking queue of people hoping to get in and looking like a technicolour Dunkirk scene. The causeway was impressively dry and slime free and when Deb joined me we walked into Marazion for coffee. This was part of a short Cornish road trip, detailed on my travel blog here and other highlights include the fortifications of St Mary’s and Tintagel Castle.

St Micheal’s Mount Photo Gallery

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History

By the fourth century BC, St Michael’s Mount was the site of thriving international trade. Cornish tin was a much sought after commodity and was exported to continental Europe and beyond. It is probable the mount was the island port known as Ictis that was referenced in Greek records. By the first century BC, the dominant traders at St Michael’s Mount were the Veneti tribe from Southern Brittany. In 56 BC they fought and lost a major sea battle with Roman forces under Julius Caesar which, coupled with the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43, ended this lucrative trade at St Michael’s Mount.

In the years following the Norman Conquest, St Michael’s Mount was granted to the Benedictine monks of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy – a natural choice given the similarities between the two sites. They established a small religious community on the island and Abbot Bernard le Bec built the first stone church there in 1135. The community was briefly disrupted in 1193 when Henry de La Pomeray took control of the island as part of the attempted coup of Prince John (later King John) against his brother, Richard I. That rebellion was defeated but it was around this time the castle on the island was built; perhaps by Henry but more likely after his suicide when Richard returned. It was a significant structure with square towers, a large gatehouse and a substantial curtain wall. Having been restored the monks also fortified their Priory by adding the church tower and courtyard walls.

Over the subsequent centuries St Michael’s Mount would continue to have an active religious community. An English Prior was appointed in 1385 and the site was later transferred to the ownership of Syon Monastery in Middlesex (a Bridgettine Order institution founded in 1415 by Henry V). However it could not avoid national politics and became embroiled in the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian Henry VI had been deposed in 1461 with his court fleeing abroad to France. One of his key supporters was John de Vere, Earl of Oxford who had joined the Lancastrian court in exile and in 1470 participated in the invasion and overthrow of the Yorkist Edward IV. When that King returned with an army in 1471, Oxford led the right wing at the Battle of Barnett (1471) but was defeated. He fled to France and, with the Lancastrian cause seemingly lost and reconciliation with the Yorkists impossible, he resorted to privateering. In desperation on 30 September 1473 he seized St Michael’s Mount. A large Edwardian army was dispatched to besiege him there under John Fortescue and on the 15 February 1474, after a four and a half month siege, he was compelled to surrender. Imprisoned at Hammes Castle near Calais, he escaped and fled into exile to join the Court of Henry Tudor whose army he would later lead to victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485). But the links between St Michael’s Mount and the Wars of the Roses did not end here for in 1497 Perkin Warbeck – claiming to be Richard, Duke of York (one of the Princes in the Tower) – landed at the Mount before moving inland to (unsuccessfully) challenge Henry VII.

After the events of the fifteenth century, St Michael’s Mount returned to being a quiet religious order until Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Its remote location and lack of wealth made it a low priority for Royal officials with the site not being formally suppressed until 1548. But the English Reformation continued apace with a New Prayer Book that banned the Latin Mass. This was hotly contested by the Cornish populace whose Celtic background meant they had a better grasp of Latin than English and in 1549 the mount was temporarily seized by rebels during a general Cornish uprising.

St Michael’s Mount remained in Crown ownership until 1599 when Queen Elizabeth sold it to Sir Robert Cecil. His descendants sold it onto Sir Francis Bassett in 1640 who garrisoned it for the King during the Civil War. Following the defeat of the Royalist field armies, Parliamentary forces advanced into the South West and besieged the Mount. After its capture Colonel John St Aubyn was appointed Captain of the Mount and in 1659 he purchased it outright. He was allowed to keep the property after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 with the site being modified into his private home. Upgrades were made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (including romanticising the castle). The site was re-fortified in 1940 with a number of machine gun pillboxes as part of the South Coast defences against possible German invasion. In 1954 it was gifted to the National Trust.

References

Full visitor information is on the castle site, here.

There is an interesting article on the religious and pilgrim aspects of St Micheal’s here.

The history above is copied from the always excellent castles forts battles site here.