victualling house

victualling house (plural victualling houses)

1. (obsolete, historical) A commercial establishment at which food and beverages are served; tavern; inn.
   • 1617, Walter Raleigh, The History of the World, London: Walter Burre, Part 1, Book 5, Chapter 5, Section 8, p. 695

     […] when Antiochus lay feasting at Chalcis after his marriage, and his souldiors betooke themselues to Riot, as it had beene in a time of great security: a good man of war might haue cut all their throates, euen as they were tipling in their victualing houses […]

   • 1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, London: Nath. Ponder, Facsimile reproduction, London: Elliot Stock, 1875, Part 2, p. 183,

     Nor was there on all this Ground, so much as one Inn or Victualling-House, therein to refresh the feebler sort.

   • 1724, Daniel Defoe, The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard, pp. 6-7,

     This Sykes invited him to go to one Redgate’s, a Victualling-house near the Seven Dials, to play at Skettles […]

   • 1824, Laws of Harvard College, for the Use of Students, Cambridge, Massachusetts: University Press, Chapter VI. Misdemeanors and criminal offences, p. 15,

     (2.) Making or being present at any festive entertainment […] or going into any tavern or victualling house in Cambridge for the purpose of eating or drinking.