A History of the County of Oxford: Henley on Thames and Its Environs Binfield Hundred

Focused on the south-west Chilterns, this volume looks at the riverside market town of Henley-on-Thames and at the four contiguous rural parishes of Bix, Harpsden, Rotherfield Greys and Rotherfield Peppard. Henley began as a planned town probably in the late twelfth century, and became a major inland port funnelling grain, wood and (later) malt into London. In the eighteenth century it was a coaching centre, and from the 19th developed as a fashionable inland resort and commuting centre, following the belated arrival of the railway and the development of the Regatta. The adjoining parishes stretch from the river to the Chilterns uplands, comprising a mixed landscape of wood pasture, small hedged closes, and (in the Middle Ages) small open fields. Settlement is dispersed, and as elsewhere in the Chilterns the balance between crops, grazing and wood exploitation varied over time. Important buildings include Greys Court, and Henley contains a richness of eighteenth-century brick-built houses alongside some surviving timber-framing.