Hermitage (religious retreat)

Particularly as a name or part of the name of properties its meaning is often imprecise, harking to a distant period of local history, components of the building material, or recalling any former sanctuary or holy place.

In the 18th century, some owners of English country houses adorned their gardens with a "hermitage", sometimes a Gothic ruin, but sometimes, as at Painshill Park, a romantic hut which a "hermit" was recruited to occupy.

Typically, hermitages consist of at least one detached room, or sometimes a dedicated space within an open floor plan building, for religious devotion, basic sleeping accommodations, and a domestic cooking range, suitable for the ascetic lifestyle of the inhabitant.

Within a short time, more and more people arrived to adopt the teachings and lifestyle of these hermits, and there began by necessity a mutual exchange of labour and shared goods between them, forming the first monastic communities.

[citation needed] In the later feudal period of the Middle Ages, both monasteries and hermitages alike were endowed by royalty and nobility in return for prayers being said for their family, believing it to be beneficial to the state of their soul.

[citation needed] Carthusian monks typically live in a one-room cell or building, with areas for study, sleep, prayer, and preparation of meals.

[1] In the modern era, hermitages are often abutted to monasteries, or in their grounds, being occupied by monks who receive dispensation from their abbot or prior to live a semi-solitary life.

However, hermitages can be found in a variety of settings, from isolated rural sites, houses in large cities, and even high-rise blocks of flats, depending on the hermit's means.

[citation needed] Examples of hermitages in Western Christian tradition: A pustyn (Russian: пустынь) or kalyva (Greek: καλύβα) or anapat'(Armenian: անապատ [hy]) is a small sparsely furnished cabin or room where a person goes to pray and fast alone in the presence of God.