In the
Domesday Book of 1086, the settlement name is spelt
Fisertone and there were 42 households and a mill. The estate was held by Roger de Corcelle, alongside
Curry Mallet in Somerset. 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. A schoolroom was built in 1865 just west of the church, attached to an 18th-century cottage, and was later supported by the
National Society. Attendance had dwindled to 15 by 1922, and the school was closed. Almost the whole of the village was designated as a
Conservation Area in 1975. A detailed parish history was published in 1965 by the
Wiltshire Victoria County History. who owned the
manor in the
Middle Ages, and whose name was spelt in all of those ways. The last of the family was
Sir John Delamare (
c. 1320–1383). When his niece and heiress Eleanor 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. 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==