Green’s Dictionary of Slang

vaulting house n.

a brothel.

1596		T. Lodge Wits Miserie 69: Let him but looke into a vawting house, he shall play his tricks without charges.
1606		H. Parrot Mous-Trap 93: Vrbanus that committed an offence, with a young country lasse [...] To salue his credit soone conueyes her hence, vnto a Garden-house, or Vaulting-schoole.
1607		Dekker & Webster Westward Hoe V i: Shee has tricks to keepe a vaulting house vnder the Lawes nose.
1616		S.S. Honest Lawyer n.p.: Now am I in quest of some vaulting house. I would faine spend these crownes, as I got them, in cony-catching.
1625		Massinger Unnatural Combat IV ii: There is a kinde of a vaulting house nor farre off, Where I us’d to spend my afternoones, among Suburb shee-gamesters.
1628		Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests D1: He came to a Vaulting Schoole Where tumblers use to be; He likt his sport so well, That from it hee’d not part.
1637		T. Nabbes Microcosmus Act II: My name is Blood. Ayre was my father, and my mother a light-heel’d madame that kept a vaulting schoole at the signe of Virgo.
1639		R. Davenport New Tricke to Cheat the Divell I ii: I have dealt closely with a man of his To undermine him, one that [...] Leades him to Game and guzzle in Vaulting houses, And places of bad fame.
1642		Strange Newes out of Woodstreete A2v: [T]o my remembrance I never came in this invisible Vaulting Schoole.
1652		R.W. Pill to Purge Melancholy in Marshburn & Velie Blood and Knavery 114: [He is] at a private vaulting school in Chancery Lane in company of certain ladies of pleasure.
1669		Life and Death of Damaris Page 1: [She] was most notably famous for keeping a house of, what shall I call it, for it had divers names [...] a Vaulting-School, the amorous Chace, a Brothel, a Stew, the huck-strings Accademy, the hole in the Wall, &c.
1672		J. Phillips Maronides (1678) VI 132: He certainly shall be no fool, / Brought up in learned Vaulting School.
1684		Observator 2 June n.p.: A Grave Senator, doing his Gamboles in Moor-Fields at the Vaulting-School of Mother Cresswell of Famous Memory.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Vaulting-school c. a Bawdy-house.
1713		W. King York Spy 43: We came to a common Vaulting School.
1726		A. Smith Memoirs of... Jonathan Wild 4: He was yet prevail’d on to put her up in a Vaulting School near Moor-Fields.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.