[f. prec.] A house where victuals are supplied or sold; an eating-house, inn or tavern.
α. 1540–1. Elyot, Image Gov., 57. To see that no vitailyng house … shoulde haue their doores open … either before the soonne risen, or after the soone set.
1555. Eden, Decades (Arb.), 148. They … determyned to buylde townes,… that they myght bee baytinge places and vytailynge houses for suche as shulde iorney towarde the southe.
1568. Withals, Dict., 41 b/1. A vittellynge house, where meate is to be solde.
1617. Moryson, Itin., I. 122. I … tooke a chamber in a vitling house, in the Market-place.
β. 1571. in 13th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm., App. IV. 2. Licenced to keep a victualinge house within the towne of Ry.
1600–9. Rowlands, Knaue of Clubbes, 16. T’will be my castle for some three moneths space, while they search Tauerne, rifle victualing-house.
1662. in Extr. St. P. rel. Friends, II. (1911), 146. To keepe an Alehouse or Victualling-house within your precincts.
1712. Thoresby, Diary (1830), II. 151. Alter dinner at a victualling-house, I walked to Mr. Dawson’s.
1737. Gentl. Mag., VII. 371/1. No License shall be granted to sell it by retail but to Publick Victualling-Houses, Inns, Coffee Houses or Alehouses.
1842. Act 5–6 Vict., c. 44 § 1. Any Act or Acts in force touching the Regulation … of … Victualling Houses.
1885. Law Times, 28 March, 389/2. A refreshment and victualling house … on the Sleep Holms, a rocky island in the Bristol Channel.
