Every other house in this record arrives through the Jooste line. This one arrives through the marriage at the centre of it — and since 25 August 2026 the record can follow it home. Charmeon's father Terence and his father Fred, Mayor of Bathurst, stand at the near end; at the far end, ten generations back, William Fish of Stogursey in Somerset, whose children were baptised there from 1657. Between them the line runs through Cutcombe, where George Fish was baptised in January 1836 before he took his blacksmith's hammer to New South Wales.
What was asked
Do the old English books record arms for a Fish family of Somerset — a coat this house could call its own?
Where we looked
There are two ways to ask this of the old books, and both were used. One lists families by name. The other lists, county by county, the families the heralds themselves went out and recorded — and the heralds rode through Somerset more than once, so that question was asked twice, ninety years apart.
Burke’s General Armory, 1884
the book that gathers every family in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales known to bear arms, and lists them by name
It holds four Fish families. Not one of them is from Somerset, or anywhere in the West Country.
- Fish (The Height, co. York, Watson's Hist. of Halifax). Or, a fess betw. three mullets sa.
- Fish (Kempton Park, co. Middlesex). Az. a fesse wavy or, betw. two crescents in chief and a dolphin embowed in base ar.
- Fish (Coventry. Her. Visit.). Sa. a chev. wavy betw. three fleurs-de-lis ar.
- Fish (Lissameon, co. Cavan, bart., extinct. Fun. Ent. 1623, Sir John Fish, created a bart. 1621). Or, on a bend sa. five mullets ar. over all a fess of the last.
The heralds’ visitation of Somerset, 1623
the year the heralds themselves rode through the county and wrote down every family entitled to arms
They recorded no Fish family in Somerset at all.
The heralds’ earlier visitations of Somerset, 1531 and 1573
the same errand, ninety years before — and this volume prints an index of every name in it, so it can be checked by eye rather than trusted
No Fish, at any spelling. The index runs straight from Filloll to Fishacre to Fisher, with no Fish between them; and the older spellings a name like this can take — Fysh, Fyshe, Fishe, Ffish — are not there either.
Not one of these books records a Fish family of Somerset bearing arms. Four Fish coats exist in England and not one of them belongs to this county; and the heralds who rode through Somerset — in 1531, in 1573 and again in 1623 — wrote down no Fish family at all.
So this record will not hand the house a coat that belongs to someone else. Nor does it say the family had none — only that the two books which would have written it down did not.
What would change it
- A different spelling. Names moved about in the old books, and this record has already seen it decide an answer: the Cronje name came back empty six times over before it turned up spelt Crosnier, which is the family. Fysh, Fyshe, Fishe and Ffish have not been looked for yet.
- A coat already in the family’s hands. If something exists — a ring, a seal, a bookplate — the search can be run the other way round, from the drawing back to the family, which is a different book and a better question.
- The parishes, now that we know which ones. When this page was first written the record was not yet sure where in Somerset the family stood, so it had to ask the books about the whole county. It knows now — Cutcombe and Stogursey, by a line it can follow name by name — and those parishes keep their own registers of births, marriages and burials. That is a narrower and much better question, and it is the one Charmeon will be standing next to in September.
- Somewhere other than Somerset. The saved page is one family’s work. If the line turns out to come from elsewhere, the question is asked again of that county’s own visitation.
What we would like from the family
Anything real: a ring, a seal, a bookplate, a letterhead, something painted or carved — or simply a story that the family had arms, and what they looked like. If there is nothing, that is an answer too, and the record will say so plainly.
There is more on the page of things only you can tell us — and the rest of what this record holds about the house, the places and the work, is at House Fish.