What is the ancestral estate in 'The Rats in the Walls' called?
Answer
Exham Priory
Answer
Exham Priory
The ancestral estate in “The Rats in the Walls” is called Exham Priory.
H. P. Lovecraft’s 1923 story follows an American descendant of the De la Poer family who returns to England after World War I and restores the long-abandoned estate. Once there, he and his cat hear rats moving behind the walls, leading him to investigate the priory’s hidden foundations.
Beneath Exham Priory, an expedition discovers a vast underground settlement connected to the family’s horrific past. The De la Poers had bred generations of human beings as livestock, sustaining a cannibalistic cult before an ancestor destroyed the family and fled to Virginia. The estate is eventually destroyed after the truth emerges.
Readers sometimes confuse Exham Priory with Carfax Abbey, the fictional English residence of Count Dracula, or with the American Delapore estate. Exham Priory is the story’s ancestral English setting, while the narrator’s American home is called Carfax.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026