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 which were formerly used by recluses. The church itself was frequently the habitation of the anchorite. There is a notice of a hermit who lived in St. Cuthbert's Church, Thetford, and performed divine service therein. Of female recluses we gather many details in the _Ancren Riewle_ of Bishop Poore of Salisbury, who left very minute directions for the regulation of their austere and solitary lives. The little cell had an altar where the anchoress frequently prayed, and through a window saw the elevation of the Host in the daily Mass. The walls were covered with mural paintings. There was a table, a fire, and a cat lying before it. An unglazed window with a shutter was covered by a black curtain, through which she could converse with anyone outside without being seen. She was not allowed to put her head out of the open window. "A peering anchoress, who is always thrusting her head outward, is like an untamed bird in a cage," says the good bishop. The long hours of solitude were spent in devotion, working embroidery, reading her few books, talking to her servant or to those who desired to speak with her through the curtained window. The poor caged birds must often have wished to break the bars of their cage, and occasionally they escaped from their solitary confinement. In the churchyard of Whalley, Lancashire, there are two cottages which stand upon the site of a reclusorium, founded by Henry, Duke of Lancaster, in 1349. Here in the reign of Henry VI. lived one Isole de Heton, who wearied of her lot, and left the anchor-hold, an example which was followed by several of her successors. A scandal having arisen, the hermitage was dissolved.