Here is a half-amusing quote from a standard medieval history text (Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages; 1968):
Some zealots, for whom the communal life of the monks was insufficiently austere, became hermits or anchorites, obeying the impulse that always bids some to hide from the world. They might build huts in the wilds, dressed in sheepskins, exist on the produce of their own garden and the gifts of poor peasants; or they might continue to serve humanity by settling at a ford or marsh or forest way to guide travelers. Some few, particularly women, had themselves walled in a cell with a window opening on a church.