En un regard
Le château en bref
The castle of St Michael's Mount crowns the rocky islet of the same name in Mount's Bay, opposite Marazion, to which it is linked by a causeway passable only at low tide. The complex combines a former Benedictine priory, a fortress coveted in every crisis of the realm and an aristocratic residence that is still lived in.
Around 1135, Bernard of Le Bec built a priory here dependent on Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, whose summit buildings also served as a stronghold. Remodelled in the 14th and 15th centuries, the site was seized by Henry de la Pomeroy for Prince John in 1193, held by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, through a twenty-three-week siege in 1473-1474, and then occupied by the pretender Perkin Warbeck in 1497. After the suppression of the alien priories it passed to Syon Abbey (1424), then to the Crown in 1539. During the Civil War, Sir Arthur Basset held it for the King until July 1646. Colonel John St Aubyn acquired it in 1659, and his family gradually turned it into a house.
The Gothic-style Blue Drawing Rooms were fitted out around 1760 in the former Lady Chapel, the outer defences were turned into walks around 1826, and in the 1870s the architect Piers St Aubyn enlarged the whole with a large south-east block and a service wing. In 1954, the 3rd Baron St Levan gave most of the Mount to the National Trust, the family retaining a 999-year lease to live there and manage visits to the historic rooms.
