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Celtic monasticism
It seems that the first Celtic monasteries were merely settlements where the Christians lived together—priests and laity, men, women, and children alike—as a kind of religious clan.[23] According to James F. Kenney, every important church was a monastic establishment, with a small walled village of monks and nuns living under ecclesiastical discipline, and ministering to the people of the surrounding area. Monastic spirituality came to Britain and then Ireland from Gaul, by way of Lérins, Tours, and Auxerre. Its spirituality was heavily influenced by the Desert Fathers, with a monastic enclosure surrounding a collection of individual monastic cells. The British church employed an episcopal structure corresponding closely to the model used elsewhere in the Christian world. Illtud, David, Gildas, and Deiniol were leading figures in 6th-century Britain.
According to Thomas O'Loughlin, "Each monastery should be seen, as with most monasteries of the period, as an individual response to the monastic impulse by someone who had experienced monasticism and then went off to establish either a hermitage to which others later came or a cenobitic community." The monasteries were organized on a family basis. Next in importance to the abbot was the scribe, in charge of the scriptorium, the teaching function of the monastery, and the keeping of the annals. The role of scribe was often a path to the position of abbot. Hereditary right and relationship to the abbot were factors influencing appointment to monastic offices.
Buildings would generally have been of wood, wattle, and thatch. Monasteries tended to be cenobitical in that monks lived in separate cells but came together for common prayer, meals, and other functions. Celtic monasticism was characterized by a rigorous asceticism and a love for learning.
Some more austere ascetics became hermits living in remote locations in what came to be called the "green martyrdom".
Women's communities
Women's communities were normally much smaller and poorer. The nuns had to do everything themselves unless they had a couple of tenant-farmers to supply food, or pious who made donations. They spun and wove, kept their huts clean, milked their cows, and made their own meals, which could be meager.
Double monasteries
The monastery of Brigit of Kildare at Kildare, Ireland, was a double monastery, with both men and women, supervised by an Abbess, a pattern found in other monastic foundations.
Scotland
Around 397, Ninian, a Briton probably from the area south of the Firth of Clyde, dedicated his church at Whithorn to St. Martin of Tours. According to Bede, Ninian evangelized the southern Picts.
Kentigern was an apostle of the British Kingdom of Strathclyde in the late 6th century and the founder and patron saint of the city of Glasgow. Due to anti-Christian sentiment, he re-located for a time to Wales, where he established a monastery at St. Asaph's. Here he divided the monks into three groups. The unlettered was assigned to the duty of agriculture, the care of cattle, and the other necessary duties outside the monastery. He assigned 300 to duties within the cloister of the monastery, such as doing the ordinary work[clarification needed], preparing food, and building workshops. The remaining monks, who were lettered, he appointed to the celebration of divine service in church by day and by night.
Wales
Cadoc founded Llancarfan in the latter part of the fifth century. He received the religious habit from an Irish monk, St. Tathai, superior of a small community near Chepstow, in Monmouthshire. Returning to his native county, Cadoc built a church, and monastery, which was called Llancarfan, or the "Church of the Stags". There he also established a college and a hospital. His legend recounts that he daily fed a hundred clergy and a hundred soldiers, a hundred workmen, a hundred poor men, and the same number of widows. When thousands left the world and became monks, they very often did so as clansmen, dutifully following the example of their chief. Bishoprics, canonries, and parochial benefices passed from one to another member of the same family, and frequently from father to son. Their tribal character is a feature which Irish and Welsh monasteries had in common.
Illtyd spent the first part of his religious life as a disciple of Cadoc at Llancarfan. He founded the monastery at Llanilltyd Fawr. One of his students was Paul Aurelian, a key figure in Cornish monasticism. Gildas the Wise was also a student at Llanilltyd Fawr, as was Samson of Dol. Samson founded a monastery in an abandoned Roman fort near the river Severn and lived for a time the life of a hermit in a nearby cave before going to Brittany.
St David established his monastery on a promontory on the western sea, well placed to be a centre of Insular Christianity. His establishment became known for its austerity and holiness, more than as a centre of learning, although when King Alfred sought a scholar for his court, he summoned Asser of St David's. Contemporary with David were Teilo, Cadoc, Padarn, Beuno and Tysilio among them.
Cornwall
Many early medieval settlements in the region were occupied by hermitage chapels which are often dedicated to St Michael as the conventional slayer of pagan demons, as at St Michael's Mount.

Lionel (Harry) Butler (17 December 1923, Dudley – 26 November 1981, London) FRHistS MA DPhil was an academic and Principal of Royal Holloway College, University of London, (RHC) from 1973 until his death in 1981
Butler was educated at Dudley Boys Grammar School. From 1941-43 he did war service with the Royal Air Force (RAF). He then attended Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was an exhibitioner obtaining First Class Honours in Modern History in 1945.
He worked briefly as a lecturer at Magdalen and then as a research fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. In 1955 he was appointed the first Professor of Medieval History and later Vice-Principal of the University of St Andrews. He became the first male principal of RHC in 1973. Butler came to the college expecting to continue the expansion begun by his predecessor, Dame Marjorie Williamson. However, in his annual report for 1973/4 he stated: "We realised that [it]... would be a year of stringency with money in short supply.... The Government cuts in spending in December 1973 includes suspension... of compensation... for inflation, while rising costs... reduced the value of our grants."
In 1970 London University had set up a "Committee of Enquiry into the Governance of the University of London" chaired by Lord Murray of Newhaven with appointments by the university and also the University Grants Committee (UK). The "Murray Report" as it was known, covered all 34 constituent schools of the university and proposed "some kind of amalgamation" of schools for the purpose of economy in administration. By 1975/6 the resulting cuts had begun to threaten the quality of teaching, research, and the infrastructure.[1] The incoming Conservative Government of 1979 cut another 14-15% from universities' budgets. This forced a reduction in staff by about 15% in 1981. A group of senior academics also concluded that the college could not survive alone, nor cover the academic range with reduced staff, and needed to combine with another of the smaller colleges. Before anything was finalised, Butler died suddenly on 26 November 1981 in London. Dr Roy Miller assumed authority in his capacity as Vice-Principal of RHC and later became the next principal. (Wikipedia)