Definition of "rookery"
rookery
noun
plural rookeries
(by extension) A crowded tenement.
Quotations
The squares near Ladbroke Grove station ... never managed to attract the kind of people for which they were designed and sank rapidly into multiple occupation, becoming almost as bad as the nearby rookeries of north-west Kensington.
2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, page 50, quoting Christian Wolmar