One of the benefits of writing this column is that every so often I receive a huge book in the post from The Victoria History of the Counties of England, commonly known as the Victoria County History (VCH) — which proclaims itself (justifiably) to be “without doubt the greatest publishing project in English local history”.

Since its inception in 1899, when it was dedicated to Queen Victoria, its researchers have been poring over every square foot of England and producing these detailed histories.

The latest to come my way is Oxfordshire Volume XVI: Henley -on-Thames and Environs which, had I had to pay for it, would have cost me £95. As I know Henley well, I found the the beautifully produced volume hard to put down. It was refreshing to come across a book that was definitely not a ‘cut and paste’ job but the result of old-fashioned research.

I enjoyed, for instance, the footnote on page 189 pointing out that Nikolaus Pevsner, got his dates wrong with regard to Friar Park, for 30 years the home of former Beatle George Harrison until his death in 2001 (and still the home of his widow, Olivia). The note states simply: “Cf. Bldg List; Pevsner, Oxon. 639 (wrongly giving bldg date as 1896).”

It’s not often that Pevsner is caught out, and it says volumes for the VCH researchers that they didn’t simply take his word. But the difference between Pevsner and the VCH is that whereas the former focuses on buildings, the latter goes into all aspects of the history of each patch it covers under such headings as social and political history, religious history and so on. In fact everything anyone could want to know.

A couple of years ago I remember being intrigued by a fact mentioned in another book from the VCH stable: Henley on Thames: Town, Trade and River, edited by Simon Townley (£14.99) published under the England’s Past for Everyone project, which ran from 2005-2010 and was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund to the tune of £3.3m (those were the days!).

The fact was that a prominent Henley resident had been killed in November 1688 in a skirmish between forces loyal to James II and those loyal to William III — and there was me thinking that the so-called Glorious Revolution that brought Dutch William to the throne had been bloodless. This sort of trail is meat and drink to a true fogey, containing as it does a hint that widely held belief may be wrong when it comes to looking at national history.

The prominent resident was Balstrode Whitelocke. He was the son of Sir William Whitelocke, who entertained Prince William of Orange at Phyllis Court in December 1688 during the prince’s progress to London to be crowned king. In Henley, the prince met a deputation of peers, bishops and London alderman headed by the banker and former lord mayor Sir Robert Clayton.

The painting of Henley in the 1690s by the Flemish artist Jan Siberechts (1627-1703), called Landscape with Rainbow and now in the Tate Gallery was probably part-commissioned by the Whitelocke family, and the double rainbow depicted (the VCH suggests) may recall their role in the revolution in which an invading prince kicked out a reigning king. Certainly the Whitelockes had much sympathy for Dutch ideas about constitutional monarchy.

As for the date when Friar Park was built, the VCH states “c. 1890”.