Historic Description of St Michael's Mount Castle

St Michael’s Mount

There was in all probability a sanctuary of the Archangel (to whom hill-tops were so often consecrated) and some sort of religious community (St Keynes was said to have come here as early as the sixth century, with her nephew St Cadoc, too), attached to it here in times long before the Conquest. The singularity of the site would mark it out almost inevitably for such an honour. “What spot,” says Canon Taylor in Celtic Christianity of Cornwall (1916), “so worthy to be the site of an earthly fane for one whose warring is in the region above man’s head, as the lonely mountain top? Accordingly the Cornishmen found a house for St Michael on the Cornish Mount, on Rowtor, on Rame Head, on Penkevil, on Caerhayes, and on the western Carn Brea.” And be it noted that St Michael is one of the very few Biblical personages who receives dedications, either in Cornwall or Brittany; the vast majority are to local saints.

The first charters relating to St Michael’s Mount as a monastery are suspect. They are of Edward the Confessor (between 1050 and 1066) and Robert Count of Mortain (circa 1086). But though they have been tampered with, they probably (as Canon Taylor holds) convey substantial truth. Most likely a Celtic religious settlement was converted into a Benedictine priory some years before the Conquest, and was made a “cell” to the Abbey of Mont St Michel in Normandy, that wonderful house which occupies a site even more startling than the Cornish one. The Norman Abbey was called S. Michael in Monte Tumba and also St Michael in Periculo Maris. It commemorated an apparition of the Archangel to St Aubert, Bishop of Avranches in 710. Both the name of “in Monte Tumba” and the apparition (assigned to 710) were transferred in later times to the Cornish Mount, but without good reason.

Through the medieval period at St Michael’s Mount remained an alien Priory. It was finally confiscated by Henry V, with the rest, and given by his son, Henry VI, to King’s College (where at least one roll of accounts relating to the fabric is preserved). In 1462 the College ceded it to Edward IV (under pressure, no doubt), and he gave it to the Brigittine monastery of Syon (Isleworth). Syon held it until the Suppression, when it was valued at “110 a year. For many years it has been the possession and seat of the family of St Aubyn.

William of Worcester, who was here in 1478, tells us that it was anciently called “the Hore-rok (hoar-rock) in the wodd (wood), and there were both woods and pastures and arable land between said Mount and Scilly, now drowned in the sea.” Further on he says that the length of the church of Mount St Michael is 30 steps, the breadth 12; the length of the chapel newly built is 40 feet – that is, 20 steps – and in breadth about 10 steps. Here he reckons a step at 2 feet; elsewhere the dimensions he gives in “steps” or “gressus” work out, when tested by extant buildings, at about nineteen inches.

The church is an aisleless building with a tower in the centre. The walls may be, in part, of the twelfth century; the north door is of Richard II’s time, and the windows, which include a rose window at each end, are Perpendicular in character. An old cross-head sculptured with the Crucifixion, the Virgin and Child, a king, and a bishop, stands outside the north door. Inside are to be seen some alabaster tablets, three of English work, including a St John’s head surrounded by the Trinity, SS. Christopher, James, Peter, Thomas of Canterbury, and the Virgin and Child. Six other are of Flemish work. There is also a fine metal chandelier, probably Flemish, of the late fifteenth century, and some glass. The Lady Chapel is at the north-east angle of the church, and in the eighteenth century was converted into drawing-rooms.

The tower in the centre has a lantern or beacon-place on the south-west angle, known as St Michael’s Chair (and celebrated by Calverley), though the real St Michael’s Chair was on the rock below.

The frater, with fifteenth-century door and fine timber roof, is distinguished by a frieze or cornice, “representing, in stucco, the modes of hunting the wild boar, bull, stag, ostrich, fox, hare, and rabbit,” which has caused it to be called the Chevy Chase room. This frieze appears to date from 1641. The royal arms in plaster were added in 1660. In the windows is some old foreign glass. Two roundels represent the Blessed and the Lost at the Last Judgment.

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