Knight, Villain, Heretic, Monk – The Giant of St Michael’s Mount
A real life Giant was discovered in the wall of St Michael’s Mount, but who was he?
The castle on the rock was a dark mass in the dredged-out bay, the low tide revealing the stone set causeway curving around to the island. A long time ago, a 7 foot 8 inches tall man stood as I was, on the shore of the Cornish coast, waiting to cross to St Michael’s Mount.
The Tall Man dwarfed his contemporaries who would have feared him, revered him or been repulsed by him. He would have looked across the bay to the island, where above the trees on a granite bluff was the chapel that became his tomb.
In 1725, his remains would be discovered in a cell at the bottom of a buried and walled-off stairway in the chapel wall. His skeleton was curled up, still clutching the jug as he had done in life. It’s unclear if he was dead or alive when he was sealed inside.
Nobody knows who this man was or why he was walled into the chapel of St Michael’s Mount, but there are several theories.
One of the first theories I discovered was that it was the skeleton of Sir John Arundell, a knight for Henry VI and the Sheriff of Cornwall. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would be slain on the sand between the island and the mainland, after which his body was set to rest in the chapel on the mount.
The prophecy is written about in The Survey of Cornwall published over 100 years after Arundell’s death, and I could find no evidence to suggest he was slain in combat or buried in the chapel.
I would have also expected his extraordinary height to be recorded or noted by history. Others in history have been remembered specifically for their height. William Bradley, also known as The Yorkshire Giant, was recorded at 7 feet 9 inches, the tallest man ever recorded in Britain, and American Robert Wadlow was the tallest verified human in the world at 8 feet 11 inches! Anyone who stood over 2 feet taller than the average would have been noteworthy, especially for a noble and historical figure like John Arundell.
How the tall man was found also indicates it wasn’t someone of nobility like John Arundell. When the cell of which the tall man was excavated, the skeleton was found on the floor with no effects other than the jug, which seems too strange of a way to bury a knight of the realm. It seems more likely that the tall man lived an ascetic existence like a priest or a prisoner — possibly both.
As Canon Thomas Tyler suggests in his 1932 book St Michael’s Mount, the ‘chamber may have served as an “in pace” cell such as existed at Mont St Michel for correction of refractory monks and others.” In pace cells were living tombs where those deemed heretical were incarcerated in complete isolation, being fed and watered through a small opening. This could sometimes be months or years, the prisoners being fed and watered in their incarceration through a small hole in the wall, much like the small blocked-up window found in the tall man’s cell. The tall man could have been in there for months or years before finally succumbing to what was probably the despair of isolation. He might have only lasted days, as there were incidents where the prisoners were completely sealed inside, dying of asphyxiation. Was the window blocked up before or after his death? And what was his crime that befitted his immurement?
The giant of the Cornish folk tale Jack the Giant Killer, which originates from St Michael’s Mount, is certainly punished for his actions. It is said that an 18ft tall giant named Cormoran built the island from granite boulders, from where he raided local villages and ate their people and livestock. Jack, a boy who lived in the village of Marazion where the causeway now leads to the island, killed Cormoran by enraging him with a horn and luring him to fall down the island’s well.
It’s certainly coincidental that such a famous and legendary folk tale would originate from an island where the skeleton of a man over 7 and a half feet tall was discovered. As Philip Pullman writes about folk tales in his essay, ‘Folk Tales of Britain’, “to open [the book] anywhere is to sink a shaft into the memory of a people and all that they know.”
Is Jack the Giant Killer a folk memory of a real giant that once lived there? Maybe among the embellishments is a kernel of truth, that a tall man who was feared for his great height lay dead in a hole as punishment for wrongdoing.
But it’s also possible — and what I believe to be the most likely theory — that the tall man entered the cell not as a punishment, but by choice as an Anchorite.
Anchorites were religious hermits who took a vow of stability to one place, often choosing to be walled into the cells of churches where they remained for their whole lives.
Historic England suggests that Anchorites were “often hidden from society because of physical deformities or differences”, so a man of unusual size would fit that description.
As they entered their cell, they were given requiem mass, a funeral rite, and from then were considered dead to the world as they embarked on a spiritual journey to god. Anchorites were revered as living saints and the community often sought their spiritual guidance. I can only assume that they died in their cells too, and their bodies, already sealed away in a tomb, were left like the tall man.
We can never know if this is the truth, and it still leaves so many questions for me. I imagine that being bound to a cell and concealed might have been a way to avoid the complications of his height. To be so tall is a physical strain on the heart and joints, so to be confined and unable to move might have been easier. And who knows how his contemporaries perceived him in a culture rooted in a fog of religion and superstition? Being concealed but still at the centre of the community may have been the best way of avoiding the judgement of others, of not being a distraction from worship.
Was he a knight or a villain, heretic or monk — maybe he was all of them. And why he was sealed in the chapel wall of St Michael’s Mount? The more I consider who the tall man was, the more I am fascinated by his story.
I am a writer, artist and hiker who walked the entire coast of Great Britain for a year. I’m now writing about this incredible experience and the beautiful coastline I walked.
