Fisherton Delamere

Location

The settlement lies just off the A36 road, midway between Salisbury and Warminster, and some ten miles south-west of Amesbury.

Position: grid reference SU001385

Name

In the Domesday Book of 1086, Fisherton is spelt Fisertone and had not yet gained its further name. "Delamere", variously spelt through the ages, was added later because this was the name of the lords of the manor, the Delameres of Nunney Castle.

History

In 1086, Fisherton was owned by Roger de Corcelle. He was also the owner of Curry Mallet in Somerset, under which his Wiltshire manor was held. In the time of Edward the Confessor, Fisherton had been owned by a man named Bondi.

The ancient parish of Fisherton Delamere formed a detached part of the Warminster hundred of Wiltshire. It contained two villages, Fisherton itself, to the north of the River Wylye, and Bapton, about a mile away and to the south of the river, and a combined total of 2,834 acres, of which 1,660 were in Fisherton. The civil parish, was extinguished in 1934, when Fisherton was transferred to Wylye, and Bapton to Stockton. The former parish was a rough oblong stretching both north and south up into the downland on each side of the river, each slope running down from an altitude of about 600 feet. At the south is a level area called the Bake. On the north-east the parish boundary ran along the old road from Chitterne to Stapleford, on the south along Grim's Dyke, an ancient earthwork, while on the south-west the boundary cut through a combe, Roakham Bottom.

The name Delamere, Delamare, or de la Mere, refers to the family which owned the manor in the Middle Ages, whose name was spelt in all of those ways. The last of the family was Sir John Delamare (c. 1320–1383).

A detailed parish history was published in 1965 by the Wiltshire Victoria County History.

Owners

When Eleanor Delamare, the niece and heiress of Sir John Delamare, died in 1413, Fisherton passed into the Paulet family and thus to the William Paulet who was Lord Chamberlain and Secretary of State to Henry VIII, and Lord High Treasurer to Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Fisherton continued to belong to the Paulets as Dukes of Bolton.

The Fisherton estate was owned by the Dukes of Somerset in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Bapton was owned by Sir Cecil Chubb from 1927, and he lived at Bapton Manor. In 1939 his heirs sold his estate to Alfred Douglas-Hamilton, 13th Duke of Hamilton, who died in 1940.

Church

The Church of England parish church, St Nicholas's Church, built in the 14th century in a chequerboard pattern of flint and Chilmark stone, sits on a hill overlooking the River Wylye at the centre of the village. It is now a Grade II* listed building in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

The parish registers survive in the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre for the following dates: Christenings 1561–1895, Marriages 1566–1992, burials 1569–1992.

Governance

Almost all of the present village of Fisherton Delamere is now part of the parish of Wylye. However, as the River Wylye is the parish boundary, Fisherton Mill (lying on the south of the river) is in Stockton. The village comes under the Wylye parish council and is in the area of the Wiltshire Council unitary authority, which is responsible for almost all significant local government functions. It forms part of the South West Wiltshire Parliament constituency, and the serving Member of Parliament is Andrew Murrison.

Notable people

List of Vicars