St Michael's Mount, a conical and isolated granite rock in Mount's Bay, Cornwall, 3 miles E. of Penzance. It communicates with the shore by a causeway 560 yards long, which, however, is covered with water eight hours out of the twelve, and sometimes is impassable for two or three days together. The Mount is 195 feet high, is 5 furlongs in circumference, and is crowned by an old and picturesque castle - now used as a manorial residence - surmounted by a tower, on one angle of which there is a projecting stone lantern, popularly called 'st Michael's Chair.' At the base of the north or landward side of the Mount is a fishing-village. The 'guarded mount' is said to have received its name from an apparition of St Michael to some hermits; and Edward the Confessor founded upon it a Benedictine priory, which in 1088 was annexed to the abbey of Mont St Michel in Normandy. After the Dissolution it became the residence of five families in turn, until it was sold in 1660 to its present proprietors, the St Aubyns. For a demolition of the notion that the mount within Cornish-speaking times has been converted from a wooded promontory to an island, see Max-Muller's Chips, vol. iii.