page_title: Steep Holm
section_title: Religious foundations
hierarchical_section_title: Steep Holm / History / Religious foundations
caption_attribution_description: English: The western plateau, Steep Holm
context_page_description: Steep Holm is an English island lying in the Bristol Channel. The island covers 48.87 acres at high tide, expanding to 63.26 acres at mean low water. At its highest point it is 78 metres above mean sea level. It lies within the historic boundaries of Somerset and administratively forms part of North Somerset. Between 1 April 1974 and 1 April 1996 it was administered as part of Avon. Nearby is Flat Holm island, part of Wales.
  The Carboniferous Limestone island rises to about 200 feet and serves as a wind and wave break, sheltering the upper reaches of the Bristol Channel. The island is now uninhabited, with the exception of the wardens. It is protected as a nature reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest with a large bird population and plants including wild peonies. There was a signal station or watchtower on the island in Roman times, but there may have been human habitation as early as the Iron Age. In the 6th century it was home to St Gildas and to a small Augustinian priory in the 12th and 13th centuries. An inn was built in 1832 and used for holidays in the 19th century. A bird sanctuary was established in 1931 and since 1951 has been leased to charitable trusts.
context_section_description: According to legend, first recorded by John Leland in the 16th century, Saint Gildas, the author of De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, lived on Steep Holm during the 6th century. He arrived on Steep Holm after visiting his friend Saint Cadoc, who lived on Flat Holm as a hermit. Gildas supposedly left the island, after pirates from the Orkneys carried off his servant and furniture, to become Abbot of Glastonbury. Other semi-legendary saints are also associated with the island; in John Rous's Historia Regum Angliae (c. 1480), Rous claims that Saint Dubricius, the saint said to have crowned Arthur, retired to an hermitage on the island of 'Stepeholm' in the River Severn. The Vikings took refuge on Steep Holm during the summer of 914 and then carried out raids on the coast of Somerset at Watchet and Porlock, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. At the end of the 12th century, there was a small priory of Canons Regular of St Michael on the island. The only priory building fully excavated measured 73 feet (22 m) long and 15 feet (4.6 m) wide, with the cloisters and other structures still to be identified. The date of the original foundation of the priory is unclear; however, in the early 13th century the patron was William I de Cantilupe. His family were also patrons of Studley Priory in Warwickshire. His granddaughter married Lord Robert de Tregoz who acquired the freehold of the whole island; however, endowments for the upkeep of the priory were declining, which led to it being abandoned between 1260 and 1265, the monks returning to Studley Priory. A Blue Lias memorial stone from the abbey, which has a Cross of Lorraine, was found in 1867 during the fortification of the island. It was incorporated into an armoury leading to the naming of the "tombstone battery".
caption: The western plateau
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