# General view [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ARCHITECT, Irish]() - Date: 0601-0650 - Technique: Photo ## Commentary Monasticism in Britain originated in Egypt. The earliest monks were hermits living in solitude in their huts or caves. Some hermits moved, without abandoning their individual huts. Only churches or chapels and some additional halls were communal. In this form monasticism had found a first European home early in the 5th century on the island of Lérins not far from Marseilles, and from there it had reached Ireland. Irish monasteries flourished in the 6th and 7th centuries. Traces and fragments of monasteries with monks' stone huts and communal buildings exist at Skellig Michael on the west coast of Ireland. ## Related artworks - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [General view]() - [General view]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()