Exham Priory, England

An estate whose sub-cellars descend through Roman, and then pre-Roman, construction into something that isn't architecture in any normal sense at all. Its restoration was meant to be a return to family history; the family history goes down much further than the paperwork suggests.

Whereabouts: A restored medieval priory near Anchester, in rural England, built atop the ruins of a Roman, and older, foundation.

Access: By transatlantic passage from America, then by ordinary road once ashore — the narrator's own inheritance is what grants him entry to a house the local villagers otherwise avoid.