Also 6 laye-, leystall(e, 6–7 lei-, leystal, laystale, 7 leastall, lestal(l, ? loystal. [f. LAY v. + STALL; perh. to be regarded as an altered form of next.]
† 1. A burial-place. Obs.
1527. Lanc. Wills (Chetham Soc.), I. 16. My bodye to be bured wtin the white freris of Chester … and thei to have for my laystall xiijs. iiijd.
1541. Ludlow Churchw. Acc. (Camden), 5. Reseyved of mastere Foxe for mr wardens leystalle vjs. viijd.
2. A place where refuse and dung is laid.
1553. Surrey Ch. Goods (1869), 98. A pese of grownd to make a leystall for the soyle of the hole paryshe.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Voiries d’vne ville, the laystall of a towne.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., I. v. 53. Many corses, like a great lay-stall, Of murdred men.
1610. Death Rauilliack, in Harl. Misc. (Malh.), III. 112. The house … to be utterly ruinated, and be converted into a common leastall.
1612. Drayton, Poly-olb., Pref. A. The common Lay-stall of a Citie.
1702. Lond. Gaz., No. 3825/4. The Ground called the Laystal at Mile-end.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res. (1858), 26. Five-million quintals of Rags picked annually from the Laystall.
1881. Times, 25 Aug., 7/3. It does not require a very old man to remember a universal reign of cesspools, open ditches, and public laystalls, even in our largest and best kept towns.
attrib. 1745. De Foe’s Eng. Tradesm., iii. (1841), I. 20. The brickmakers all about London mix seacoal-ashes, or laystal-stuff, as we call it, with their clay, of which they make brick.
b. fig.
1629. H. Burton, Babel no Bethel, 66. The Schoole and Laystall of all impure spirits.
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Underwoods, Little Shrub Growing by. There he was, Proud, false, and trecherous,… the lay-stall Of putrid flesh alive!
1644. Vicars, God in Mount, 152. Stage-playes … those most dirty and stinking sinks or lestalls of all kinde of abominations.
a. 1734. North, Exam., I. iii. § 99 (1740), 191. The Whole was no better than a Laystall of Lyes.
3. ‘A place where milch cows are kept in London’ (Simmonds, Dict. Trade, 1858).
