St Michael’s Mount Do-it-all

TV reporter David Mudd attempts to catch up with jack-of-all-trades John Britten as he takes up his various duties on St Michael's Mount near Marazion in Cornwall. John Britten is the boatman, the fire chief, the churchwarden, the harbourmaster and the postman. The tidal island of St Michael's Mount attracts many visitors and film crews and is reached by a causeway of granite stones at low tide and by boat at other times. Some 30 people live in the island's village.

The Mount is co-managed by the National Trust and the St Aubyn Estates. The St Aubyn family has inhabited the castle since Sir John bought it in 1660. Monks from Mont St Michel in Normandy built the church and priory on the site of the former Benedictine Abbey after supporting William the Conqueror's claim to the English throne in 1066 and the castle was ereted in the fourteenth century. St Michael's Apparition to fishermen in 495 AD is the theme of John Milton's The Great Vision of the Guarded Mount in Lycidas (1637) and explains the dedication of the Mount. Cornish legend talks of the slaying of the giant Cormoran on the Mount by local boy Jack, a valiant Cornishman.