St Michael's Mount time in Britain in the 1930s, when he had proposed an alliance with Nazi Germany, General von Ribbentrop frequently visited Cornwall. In 1954, Francis Cecil St Aubyn, 3rd Baron St Levan gave most of St Michael's Mount to the National Trust, together with a large endowment fund. The St Aubyn family retained a 999-year lease to inhabit the castle and a licence to manage the public viewing of its historic rooms. This is managed in conjunction with the National Trust. The chapel of St Michael, a fifteenth-century building, has an embattled tower, one angle of which is a small turret,
Mount Saint Michael careful records of seismic activity. Mount St. Michael soon gained international acknowledgement as an important seismographic center. At this time the 700 acre (2.8 km) farm provided all the food needed for the seminary. Jesuit brothers, farmers, tailors, bakers, cobblers, bee keepers and horticulturists, saw to the material needs of the community and the formation of the candidates placed in their charge. It was said to be one of the finest Jesuit houses of study in the world. In the 1960s the Jesuit order experienced a drastic drop in the number of vocations and Mount St. Michael closed its doors