Fusion Page on Holidays in Cornwall and Mont Sant Michel and St Michael's Mount a comparison, 

So St Michael's Mount and Mont Sant Michel, are the twin structures of the English Channel that sit on opposite sides, but their comparitive identical-ness makes them show the links that the Channel offered between the 2 coasts, rather than serving purely as a barrier as it is also famed for. So here is my arrowpoint style comparision of the 2 sites, you can even play spot the difference with the 2 photos, not of the actual real way, but in a of the 2 sites way, I have not got answers, there are too many. It would be bettwe to play spot the similarities.

So firstly 

St Michael's Mount, Karrek Loos yn Koos in Cornish, is a island 0.23 KM squared in area, or 23 hecatres, that connected to a causeay to Marazion, a town today of 1400 people, that is a small distance of barely 2 miles east of Penzance,  that itself sits on the south west of Cornwall. Itself a large town of 21,000 people. 

The island, cam be reached by a todal causeway, so when the tide is up you need a boat to cross back again. There are not a huge number of small islands like this, where people also live on them even for Britain, where they are tidal causewayed as well. I found it interesting to wait for the  tide to go out so we could cross the causeway, not causewaym,  and make sure we had to get across again, before the water came over again. 

The Cornish name means "the grey rock in a wood" some wonder if the term is from before Mount's Bay flooded, as remains of trees of past centuries are found in near waters at low tide. Though it has been a island for a very long time. 

In the Mesolithic the island was dry ground surrounded by marsh. 

When precisely it became a island is unsure, but for sure it was always near the coast, and it was likely always surrounded by marsh, or water. in terms of Iron Age history to now. 

Rampart like stony banks on the north east slope are said likely to be off the early 1st millennia BC, and are said to be  a cliff fort. This means you can say this was a Iron Age or Bronze Age hillfort, or promonatory fort. 

It is among many rivals for the status or title as being the site of the island of Ictis, a tin trading centre in the Bibliotheca historica of Greco-Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, from the first century BC. Other candidates include Exeter, Hengistbury Head, and the Isle of Portland. Comparisons are made to classical sources that stated that a habit of the Veneti sailors, was to pile tin or items on their ships or boats on similar type isles on the Breton coast and use the tides to lift them and do the same in Britain. So similar things could have occurred here. Frankly, it occurred somewhere, and the isles looked like this, so you might as well say it is a ghost of that truth.  Many top calibre archaeologists plumped for this as the said site, indeed Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes Pre-histotic Britain book of 1943 said if coastlines were the same it was a likely site. 

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St Michael's Mount today has a monastery that sits on it. It may have had one from the 8th to 11th Century. 

Anglo Saxon King of England, Edward the Confessor, in the 11th Century, (Strange he is not labelled Edward the first) gifted the site to the Benedictine order of Mont Saint-Michel, with it their priory of their abbey,  till the dissolution of the alien houses by Henry V. So not Henry Viii, and his dissolution of more such religious houses. This act by Henry V, split it's proper connection with it's Breton / Norman twin. 

The 11th Century was also when England Anglo Saxon and Norman, made Cornwall turn from a kingdom to more of a duchy, and part of England. Ending a half millenia of Arthurian style king's Celtic rule. Though it's distance from London always helped it be quite seperate, and have it's own identity for centuries. A castle was built in the 12th Century.

The site was involved in battles between major figures, King John, when he was a Prince had the castle captured by among his supporters, in 1193, and Edward IV gave the site to Syon Abbey. But a Earl of Oxford then held it V a siege of 6,000 of that same king's troops in 1473. The Pretender, Perkin Warbeck took it for a while, in his 1497 revolt, against Henry Vii. The Cornish and Devonish Prayer Book rebellion, I mean rebellion of 1549 was also partly led by a governor of the isle, Humphrey Arundell. The castle was held by Royalists against Parliament in the civil war to 1646. 

In the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, a tsunami occurred which hit Cornwall, 1000 miles away, it caused the sea to rise 6 metres here. At that time as well as the monastery remains, conical in shape, like it;s twin, there were a few fishermen's cottages. 

In  1821 the island hit peak population of just over 221

In 1954 the isle was mostly given to the National Trust, and it is still a major tourist site as it has been since the 19th Century, more so the 20th. 

The main chapel on the isle is a 15th Century structure. 

A chronicler John of Worcester, claimed the islet was 5 miles from the sea in 1099, but floods ended that fact. Though before then it was known as by the sea. So maybe not. This ties in with a Cornish legendary land of Lyonesse, connected to King Arthur that links Cornwall with the Scilly Isles a land now under water, again a legend. Though it is felt actually the inendation of lands like this was many centuries before. Some islets between the Scilly Isles and Cornwall have similar names to the Cornish legend land, though this land was lost mostly inm i Mean in  the Bronze Age. It is thought Scilly Isles, may have included a larger main island to near the end of the Roman era. The thing is the floods takes are likely folk memories of rising sea levels in the 1st millenia, and even of sighting of tree stumps in bays inciting folk tales of what were Bronza Age inundations. 

So the main theory is Dr. H. O'Neil Hencken in Archaeology of Cornwall and Scilly(1932), said  by Iron Age times, the island of St. Michael's Mount would be a  important port.  https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/document.pdf

Some legends even associate the islet to Atlantis, which is clever, I mean maybe the Scilly Isles were the tin isles, not Britain as a whole. 

Mont Sant Michel, 

Mont-Saint-Michel  is a commune located in the Manche department in Normandy It takes its name from the rocky islet dedicated to Saint Michael where today stands the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel. Mont Sant Michel, covers 100 hectares in area. 

The architecture of Mont-Saint-Michel and its bay make it the most frequented tourist site in Normandy  and one of the 10 most visited in France, the first site after those of Île-de- France - with nearly two and a half million visitors each year.

A statue of Saint Michael placed at the top of the abbey church rises to 157.10 meters above the shore. A major element, the abbey and its outbuildings are classified as historical monuments by the list of 1862  (60 other constructions are subsequently protected; the island and the coast on the Bay cord included since 1979 on the World Heritage List of UNESCO and the mill Moidrey since 2007. .

In 2018, the town had 30 inhabitants, called the Montois . The islet of Mont Saint-Michel has become over time an emblematic element of French heritage.
Mont Sant Michel, covers 100 hectares in area. 

Originally, it was known as Mount Tomb . There must have been a stone or a megalithic monument intended for pagan worship, to which two oratories succeeded, one dedicated to Saint Symphorien, the other to Saint Stephen , built by hermits in the 6th and 7th centuries , as well as The Revelatio ecclesiae sancti Michaelis archangeli in Monte Tumba reports. Following this first Christianization of Mount Tomb , an oratory was erected in honor of the Archangel Saint Michael in 708 ( 709 for the dedication), as indicated by the Annales du Mont-Saint-Michel written at the beginning of the 12th century . Aubert , bishop of Avranches, installed a community of twelve canons on the site to serve the sanctuary and welcome pilgrims . It was at this time that the mountain welcomed, to the east of the rock, the first villagers who fled the Viking raids. This first habitat must have housed the various trades necessary for the construction of the first sanctuary: stonemasons , masons , jobbers and carpenters . Then he had to welcome the people responsible for supplying the religious community. “Despite the many reconstructions which have gradually shaped the town we know today, the original core of the village is still visible: it indeed corresponds to an area characterized by a relatively complex plot organization and a tangle of constructions served by winding alleys ”. This is roughly the area where the parish church of Saint-Pierre and its cemetery are located. Most of the dwellings were to be built of wood and mud.

From the year 710 and throughout the Middle Ages , the mount was commonly nicknamed by the clerics "Mont Saint-Michel at the peril of the sea" ( Mons Sancti Michaeli in periculo mari ). Perhaps as it was in such a location of seascape surrounding it. Yes there is a causway, but what a peril. I remember going there on a school trip, and seeing it faraway from the coach, Then we got a trip a guide to see the whole site. We were in a big group, and when we came down the teachers were looking for us, we were late, so could not buy a ornament. What a shame, we were only a few minutes late, the next time there was a trip, this time in Chester=, we came back early, and everybody else was half an hour late, Typical, the one time were a tiny bit late, it is as if we were indreibly late. 

Mont Sant Michel which was used as Armorican site. It was used as a Armorican so post Roman Celtic society, keep, from the fall of Rome, to a sacking by the Franks in the 7th Century. Then became a monastic site.  The attack actually hurt Cornish Breton trade a bit. It had been a major part of the British kingdom in Brittany. 

The Mount was attached since the formation of the ecclesiastical circumscriptions to the diocese of Avranches , in Neustria , which probably reflected an earlier situation, that is to say the belonging of the Mount to the territory of the Abrincates , members of the Armorican confederation, on which will be applied the Roman administrative framework, then the Christian religious framework, in accordance with a process observed elsewhere in the future Normandy and beyond.

In 867 , the Treaty of Compiègne attributed the Cotentin , as well as the Avranchin (although this is not clearly stipulated), to the king of Brittany , Solomon . The Avranchin, like the Cotentin, were therefore not part of the Norman territory granted to the Viking chief Rollo in 911 . Mont Saint-Michel remained Breton, although still attached to the diocese of Avranches, itself in the ancient ecclesiastical province of Rouen , whose main city had also become the capital of the new Normandy. He was still 933 when William Ist of Normandy, says Guillaume Longue Épée, “obtained from the King of France a notable expansion of his territory, with Cotentin and Avranchin, until then controlled by the Bretons. It is therefore on this date that the Mount is officially attached to Normandy ” , the political border of Avranchin being temporarily fixed at the Sélune , a coastal river which flowed east of the Mount. Guillaume Longue Épée made large donations of land to the community of Montais canons, these areas being almost all located between Couesnon and Sélune .

Richard I st of Normandy , son of William Long Sword, was at heart to continue the monastic reform work of his father and ordered the canons to which the Mount had been entrusted to give up their dissolute life or leave. All left except one, Durand, who reformed out of love for the Archangel. This is how Benedictines from different abbeys, no doubt, Saint-Taurin d'Évreux and Saint-Wandrille, settled there in 966 . The history of this foundation is told in the Introductio monachorum, which appears at the beginning of the Cartulaire du Mont-Saint-Michel . The first abbot was Mainard Ier . A well-established tradition wants it to be the reformer Mainard, responsible for restoring the Abbey of Saint-Wandrille, but this hypothesis remains controversial. It is he who would have built the pre-Romanesque church called Notre-Dame-sous-Terre, built during the same period  . His nephew, Mainard II , succeeded him until 1009 , who was also abbot of Redon . “At that time, the Mount sealed the good understanding between the two dukes, of Normandy and Brittany”  .

During the first quarter of the XI th  century, good relations persisted between the monks of Mount and dukes, abbots under Hildebert I st (1009-1017) then Hildebert II (1017-1023). But they were spoiled when the Norman Duke Richard II , who protected the abbey like his father, decided to replace the Mons abbot by an outside and reformer abbot, first the Romain Supo then the Bourguignon Thierry, already abbot of Jumièges abbey and guardian of Bernay abbey , then a dependency of Fécamp abbey.

The new Duke Robert I st of Normandy , said Robert the Magnificent, appointed in 1027 a Le Mans original Abbot Aumode, to whom he confided in 1032 its new foundation, the abbey of Cerisy . Abbot Supo was therefore recalled and directed the Abbey of Mons until his retirement to the Abbey of Fruttuaria before 1048 .

Duke William the Conqueror took a keen interest in abbey successions and granted benefits, both temporal and spiritual, to the Abbey of the Mount which had financially supported the conquest of England . Thus, certain Mons monks were called to lead English abbeys. Thanks to the income from land and priories granted by the Duke, the Romanesque abbey was quickly completed. When the Conqueror died, the Mount went through a troubled period but thanks to the excellent administration of its abbots, notably Bernard du Bec , the abbey experienced great intellectual development. She escaped, inAugust 1138, to the great fire that started the inhabitants of Avranches and which devastated the village of Mons, following a disagreement with the monks on the succession of Henri Ier Beauclerc.

In 1009, the Duke of Normandy decides to exercise direct control over the abbey of Mont Saint Michel and Father Maynard I st , from the community of Saint-Wandrille , was ousted and forced to retreat to the Saint-Sauveur Abbey of Redon . [ref. needed] to be replaced by Abbot Hildebert I er , preferred by Richard II .

Taking advantage of the Havoise Regency of Normandy, his sister, over Brittany and the aggression of the Viking leader Olaf on Dol-de-Bretagne in 1014, Duke Richard II of Normandy pushes back the border with Brittany around 1027-1030 from Sélune to Couesnon.

In 1030, Alain III of Brittany , Duke of Brittany, conflicts with his cousin, the Duke Robert I st Normandy son of Richard II. It is the omnipotence of Robert "the Magnificent" who in his Duchy of Normandy, firmly reestablished the ducal power . It is in this perspective of hegemony that he asks his cousin Alain III to take an oath of loyalty to him. The latter refused and resolved the Duke of Normandy to use force. After the construction of a fortress, that of Cheruel, the Duke of Normandy launched an expedition to Brittany. Alain retaliated by launching a counter-offensive in the Avranchin, but he was pushed back with heavy losses. Their uncle Robert le Danois , archbishop of Rouen, mediates during an interview at Mont-Saint-Michel . In 1031, Alain and his brother Eon de Penthièvre made a donation to Mont-Saint-Michel.

History and legend become confused on this date. The texts of the time do not specify the fate of Mont Saint-Michel, but its attachment to Normandy is attested a few decades later, and it has already been effective for a long time when the Bretons of Guy de Thouars set fire to the Mont in April 1204 and massacred the Norman population.

However, a legend affirms that the Couesnon, during one of its frequent wanderings, would have started to emerge to the west of the Mount, thus causing the latter to pass through Normandy [ref. necessary] . If this legend is correct, the Mount would have been located west of the Couesnon in 1009 and the divagation of the Couesnon would take place a few decades later. If it is false, the Couesnon was already throwing itself west of Mont Saint-Michel in 1009.

Anyway, the Mont-Saint-Michel will have been Breton from 867 to 933, geopolitically, without ever having been integrated into the archdiocese of Dol , likewise, the foundation of a college of canon by the Bishop of Avranches from the VII th  century, the choice of St. Michael as patron saint empire by Charlemagne and donations of Rollo to restore the collegial and finally conversion to Benedictine Abbey in 966 by monks after community the abbeys of Saint-Wandrille , Jumièges and Saint-Taurin d'Évreux, all located in Normandy, clearly indicate the permanent membership of the Mont in the sphere of influence of the Frankish then Norman church, distinct from the Breton church, which makes the question of the exact geographical location rather secondary. The official limit between Brittany and Normandy is now fixed regardless of the location of a watercourse - and precisely 4  km to the west, at the foot of the Saint-Broladre massif .

It should be noted that the hypothesis of a significant wandering of the Couesnon is perfectly consistent and probable, as the beds of the rivers could vary, in the absence of any pipeline - and sometimes of several tens of kilometers. The fact that the mouth of the Couesnon was at 6  km of rock XVIII th  century provides no information on its position over the past centuries - the topography makes even inevitable he moved regularly. On the other hand, no text attests that it swung from one side of Mont Saint-Michel to the other.

In 1204 , during the conquest of Normandy by Philippe Auguste against Jean sans Terre , the Breton knights of Guy de Thouars , attacked Mont Saint-Michel in retaliation for the assassination of Arthur by Jean sans Terre. During the fighting, they set it on fire, which completely devastated the site. The knights of Guy de Thouars then pass by the sword all those who try to escape

The English king during the 100 years’ war, took large much of France for a time, but this site’s resistance as of it’s geography and built up battlements apparently partly inspired Joan of Arc, to help drive the English kings back. 

So a important site. We can say both are forts, in history, and important, and now tourists sites. One was a major site in Dark Ages Celtic history, in military ways, the other a great site even later though both were. 

In France Saint Michael's Mount is sometimes translated as Mont ant Michel, and in Britain, Mont Sant Michel, is sometimes spelt Saint Michael's Mount, which is not required as it is good to be able to tell them apart, and we can tell the difference. Also, they are no spelt, Sant Michael's Mount, or Saint Michael's Mont, st Michael's mount, St Michaeal's Mount, St Mike's mount, St Mikey's mount, Mon Sant Michel, or Mont Sant Michelle, or Mont Sant Michell, or but Mont St Michelle, and St Michael's Mount, Mt st michel, and Saint Micheal's Mont, or Mount Sant Michel, or Mt st Michelle, could be terms used confusing people. Anyway see my links below.