A woman says she is desperate for help to rid her home of rats - which keep her up at night and chew her carpets.

Widow Marilyn Nolan, who is recovering from surgery, says one pest crawled over her quilt, while another leapt from her window sill.

A third was struck with a baseball bat, and another was filmed scrambling up her staircase and scurrying away when a shoe was thrown at it.

"Exhausted" Mrs Nolan - a council tenant who lives in Queens Rise, Ringwould near Deal - says she and her son have been plagued by the vermin for more than two years.

She is now demanding that Dover District Council either drives out the pests, or finds her a new home.

"They are coming in all over the place into every single room," she said.

"They are not small rats, they are big fat ones. We can't sleep because of the scratching at night.

"I'm trying to recover from surgery. I don't need all this vermin in my home.

"I either want something done where they stop coming in, because they have taken over, or I want to move."

Just last Saturday night Mrs Nolan's son Bernard, who lives with her, cornered one rat on the staircase and it launched itself at him.

The next morning, a neighbour was called to help when another rat was found in the maisonette.

He chased it and beat it to death with a baseball bat in a stairwell outside.

Bernard, 27, on another occasion came across one running up the staircase and he threw a training shoe at it.

Over the course of a single day, Mrs Nolan counted eight rats in her home.

Our reporter visited the maisonette on Monday and was shown rat droppings on floors, chewed carpeting and holes gnawed into woodwork.

The Nolans live in a block of 12 flats or maisonettes and other neighbours say they have been also been plagued by the rodents, who come in from a field behind.

The invasions are worst when they do not have wheat to feed on outside, when it is harvested, and they come indoors looking for food.

It is thought that half the homes are affected.

Next door neighbour Gillian Ridyard said: "These rats are rife and we have blocked holes and put down poison to do something about it."

Mrs Nolan has already tried rat poison but that has not wiped the rodents out.

Mrs Nolan, 68, is recovering from gallstones surgery, which was carried out last January. She also has severe arthritis in both knees.

The family moved to the home in 2003 after Mrs Nolan's husband, Peter, 51, died in 2000 from a heart attack. He had been waiting for open heart surgery.

Mrs Nolan said: "I used to be really happy here. Now none of us can sleep because of the noise from the rats scratching and we are exhausted. It doesn't feel like home any more.

"When I contact the council for advice or ask them to do anything all they've told me is to contact environmental health and they will come out and put poison down, but they will charge the tenant £165 to come out."

A spokesman for Dover District Council says investigations are being carried out.

A spokesman said: “We’re sorry to hear about this tenant’s ongoing problems with vermin.

"We have already undertaken works at the property, including baiting and blocking areas at ground level where rats could be gaining access to the property.

"We are undertaking further urgent investigations.”