outside the doors
of their anchorages. Both males and females were enrolled as recluses,
but only the latter seem to have taken upon themselves the vows of
complete seclusion.

Several of these hermitages remain. There is one at Little Budworth, in
Cheshire, in the park of Sir Philip Egerton. Warkworth has a famous one,
consisting of a chapel hewn out of the rock, with an entrance porch, and
a long, narrow room with a small altar at the east end, wherein the
hermit lived. At Knaresborough, Yorkshire, there is a good example of a
hermitage, hewn out of the rock, consisting of a chapel, called St.
Robert's Chapel, with groined roof, which was used as the living-room of
the hermit. This chapel was the scene of Eugene Aram's murder. At
Wetheral, near Carlisle; Lenton, near Nottingham; on the banks of the
Severn, near Bewdley, Worcestershire, there are anchorages, and also at
Brandon, Downham, and Stow Bardolph, in Norfolk. Spenser in the _Faery
Queen_ gives the following description of a hermit's cell:--

"A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down by a dale, hard by a forest's side,
Far from resort of people that did pass
In traveill to and froe; a little wyde
There was an holy Chappell edifyde,
Wherein the hermite dewly wont to say
His holy things, each morne and eventyde;
Hereby a chrystall streame did gently play,
Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway."

Within the churchyard of many a town or village church, and usually
attached to the church, stood a reclusorium, or anchor-hold, wherein a
recluse, male or female, once resided. At Laindon Church, Essex, there
is a fine specimen of a house of this kind attached to the west end.
Generally the anchor-hold was a small room, built of wood, connected
with the church. Frequently there is a room over the porch of a church
which may have been used for this purpose, the recluse living usually in
the church. At Rettenden, Essex, there is a room over the vestry which
has evidently been an anchor-hold. There was a window, now blocked up,
through which the recluse could see the high altar, and the celebration
of the holy mysteries, and another for him to look out, hold converse
with his friends, and receive their alms. The church of St. Patricio,
near Crickhowel, South Wales, has an anchor-hold; also Clifton Campville
Church, Staffordshire; Chipping Norton Church, Oxfordshire; Warmington
Church, Warwickshire; and many churches have rooms over the porch