St Michael's Mount, Lands End

Welcome to St. Michael's Mount.

Refuge of a pretender to the throne and arguably one of the earliest examples of town twinning in history. Gifted by Edward the Confessor to the Norman Abbey of the same name, the association continued until war with France soured relations enough for it to be plucked back four hundred years later.

One of the strangest tales in mediaeval royal history is closely connected with the island. Perkin Warbeck claimed to be Richard, Duke of York - one of the Princes in the Tower. Although there's no academic evidence to suggest Warbeck was anything other than an impostor, the resemblance to his supposed father, Edward IV, was astonishing, giving credence to contemporary speculation that he was an illegitimate son with a genuinely royal connection to the House of York.

In more recent times, and had the Second World War ended rather differently, the Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop would almost certainly have taken up residence, so taken was he with Cornwall in general and St. Michael's Mount in particular. Gifted to the National Trust in 1954, the St. Aubyn family continues to live there, as they have done for the past 400 years, and manage public viewing of the site.