House Fossoway of Cider Hall is the elder, red-apple branch of an old Reach house of First Men descent, sworn to the Tyrells of Highgarden and seated at the fork of the Mander and the Cockleswent. Their banner is a red apple on a field of gold, and their words are "A Taste of Glory". The house claims descent from Foss the Archer, a son of Garth Greenhand renowned for shooting apples off the heads of any maid who took his fancy. In the early reign of Jaehaerys I they were wealthy enough that the marriage of Lady Florence Fossoway, the "apple counter", to Martyn Tyrell increased Highgarden's incomes by a third, and her shrewd counsel ran her husband's tenure as master of coin in all but name.
By the Dance of the Dragons they held a lord's seat: Lord Owen Fossoway of Cider Hall stood with King Aegon II and the greens, joined the conspiracy of the Caltrops, and was killed at the Second Battle of Tumbleton. In the years between that war and 209 AC the lordship was lost and the house dwindled to landed knights. At the tourney at Ashford Meadow in 209 AC, Ser Steffon Fossoway, then heir to Cider Hall, broke his promise to Ser Duncan the Tall and joined Prince Maekar's accusers in the trial of seven for the price of a lordship that never came; his cousin Raymun, freshly knighted by Lyonel Baratheon, refused him and rode for Dunk under a green apple, founding the cadet branch that holds New Barrel to this day.
In the War of the Five Kings the red apples mustered with Renly Baratheon at Bitterbridge, where Ser Tanton Fossoway stood on a feast bench and swore to slay the Hound; they bent to Stannis after Renly's death, and Sers Bryan and Edwyd Fossoway died beneath the walls of King's Landing when Lothor Brune cut through half a hundred Fossoway men-at-arms at the Battle of the Blackwater, earning the byname Apple-Eater. The survivors bent the knee to King Joffrey after the battle, and by A Feast for Crows Brienne of Tarth saw the red-apple badge among the dead collected from the field at Duskendale. Ser Franklyn Flowers, the Bastard of Cider Hall, rides still with the Golden Company in the east, and Ser Derrick "the Bad Apple" Fossoway, of one branch or the other, ended his days a member of the Band of Nine that brought the War of the Ninepenny Kings down on the realm.