St Michael's Mount is a small tidal
island in Mount's Bay in Cornwall. The island is linked to the town
of Marazion by a man-made causeway of granite setts, passable between
mid-tide and low water. The population of this parish in 2011 was 35.
The earliest buildings, on the summit, date to the 12th century, the
harbour is 15th century and the village and summit buildings were
rebuilt from 1860 to 1900, to give the island its current form.
Its Cornish language name —
literally, "the grey rock in a wood" — may represent a
folk memory of a time before Mount's Bay was flooded, indicating a
description of the Mount set in woodland. Remains of trees have been
seen at low tides following storms on the beach at Perranuthnoe, but
radiocarbon dating established the submerging of the hazel wood at
about 1700 BC.
Historically, St Michael's Mount was a
Cornish counterpart of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France (with
which it shares the same tidal island characteristics and the same
conical shape, in spite of being much smaller), when it was given to
the Benedictines, religious order of Mont Saint-Michel, by Edward the
Confessor in the 11th century.
