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St Michael's Mount (, exhibiting a curious combination of Slate and Granite , rising 400 yards (400 m) from the shore of Mount's Bay , situated in Penwith in west Cornwall , England , in the extreme south western peninsula of the island of Britain . It is united with Marazion by a natural Causeway cast up by the sea, and passable only at low tide. Its Cornish language name — literally, "the grey rock in the wood" — may represent a folk memory of a time before Mount's Bay was flooded. Certainly, the Cornish name would be an accurate description of the Mount set in woodland. Recollections of a forest sunk at the same time as the flooding of Lyonesse are strong in local legend. Historically St Michael's Mount was a Cornish counterpart of Mont Saint Michel in Normandy , France . St Michael's Mount is known colloquially by locals as simply ''the Mount''. THE ISLAND TODAY The chapel is extra-diocesan and the Castle is the residence of Lord St. Levan. Many relics, chiefly armour and antique furniture, are preserved in the castle. The chapel of St. Michael , a 15th-century building, has an embattled tower, in one angle of which is a small turret, which served for the guidance of ships. Chapel Rock, on the beach, marks the site of a Shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary , where pilgrims paused to worship before ascending the Mount. A few houses are built on the hillside facing Marazion, and a spring supplies them with water. The harbour, widened in 1823 to allow vessels of 500 tons to enter, has a pier dating from the 15th century, and subsequently enlarged and restored. St. Michael's Mount is still owned by the St. Aubyn family, but visitor access is controlled by the National Trust . HISTORY The Mount may be the ''Mictis'' of . Both men had access to the now lost texts of the ancient Greek Geographer Pytheas who visited the Island in the 4th Century BC. If this is true, it one of the earliest identified locations in the whole of western Europe and particularly on the island of Britain. It may have been held by a religious body in the time of Edward The Confessor and given by Robert, Count Of Mortain to the Norman abbey of Mont Saint Michel . It was a Priory of that abbey until the dissolution of the Alien Houses by Henry V , when it was given to the abbess and Convent of Syon at Isleworth , Middlesex . It was a resort of Pilgrim s, whose devotions were encouraged by an indulgence granted by Pope Gregory in the 11th century. Henry Pomeroy captured The Mount on behalf of to Colonel John St Aubyn. Colonel St Aubyn's descendant Lord St Levan now lives there. LOCAL GOVERNMENT St Michael's Mount forms its own civil parish for local government purposes. Currently this takes the form of a Parish meeting as opposed to a Parish council (that is, a yearly meeting of electors that does not elect councillors). The current Chairman of the St Michael's Mount parish meeting is Mr James St Aubyn. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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