In the 16th century, King Henry VIII's suppression of monasteries, monks and hermits, created a void in English culture and imagination. After the turmoil of religious and civil warfare in 17th century England, a maudlin literature arose by the 18th century that featured hermits and other eccentric characters

According to "The Hermit in the Garden" by Gordon Campbell, it became highly fashionable for owners of country estates to commission architectural follies for their landscaped gardens. These follies sometimes included hermitages, which landowners peopled either with imaginary hermits or with a real person. Those who took employment as garden hermits were typically required to refrain from cutting their hair or washing, and some were dressed as druids. Unlike the hermits of the Middle Ages, these were wholly secular hermits, products of the eighteenth century fondness for 'pleasing melancholy'.

For wealthy landowners the ornamental hermit was something of a fashion statement. The motivations behind hiring a hermit reflected a lost appreciation of emotional depth, or the ‘pleasing melancholy’. Melancholy, like romantic love, was an emotion restricted to the upper classes, as only nobility of birth endowed one with the requisite depth of character. Melancholy became highly desirable and in England gave rise to a school of graveyard poets.

This short-lived and not extensive fad fizzled out by the end of the eighteenth century. In fact there were not many ornamental hermits, but they were brought to attention in the 20th century by a British writer, poet and essayist, Edith Sitwell, author of the intriguing 1933 book "English Eccentrics". Sitwell was not a bit less eccentric than the many characters she describes. Similar accounts of ornamental hermits are included in the more recent 2002 book, "Pelican in the Wilderness" by Isabel Colegate.