Etymology From Middle English hermytage, ermitage, from Old French ermitage, hermitaige, from Latin erēmīta, borrowed from Ancient Greek ἐρημίτης (erēmítēs, “hermit”). By surface analysis, hermit + -age.
1
A house or dwelling where a hermit lives.
But vvhat a vvretched, and diſconſolate Hermitage is that Houſe, vvhich is not viſited by thee [God], and vvhat a VVayue, and Stray is that Man, that hath not thy Markes vpon him?1624, John Donne, “13. Prayer”, in Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: […], London: […] A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, →OCLC, page 329:
I saw the huge rocking-stone, that had been violently depressed by him as he sprang, fly back when relieved of his weight till, for the first time during all these centuries, it got beyond its balance, fell with a most awful crash right into the rocky chamber which had once served the philosopher Noot for a hermitage, and, I have no doubt, for ever sealed the passage that leads to the Place of Life with some hundreds of tons of rock.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
2
A place of seclusion.
Temptation is an obsequious servant that has no objection to the country, and we know that it takes up its lodging in hermitages as well as in cities; and that in the most remote and inaccessible desert it keeps company with the fugitive solitary.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 28, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
Here a real supper was elegantly served […] with choice wines, particularly white hermitage, which I never before had tasted.1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 185
You will do very well, my lady, very well indeed. I will send you in a couple of dozen of capital sherry, fit for the dons, and some hermitage, by no means to be sneezed at;...1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 1: