Bishop's Stortford is a market town and civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It lies east-north-east of the county town of Hertford and north-north-east of Charing Cross in central London. The town adjoins the border with Essex. The M11 motorway passes to the east of the town, and Stansted Airport lies immediately east of the motorway. At the 2021 census the parish had a population of 40,955 and the built up area had a population of 40,915.
The town grew up around a ford on the River Stort. Shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066, the manor of Stortford was bought by the Bishop of London. Around the same time, Waytemore Castle was built beside the ford. The castle's motte still stands in what is now Castle Park on the edge of the town centre. Bishop's Stortford has been a market town since medieval times.
Bishop's Stortford railway station is on the West Anglia Main Line from London Liverpool Street to Cambridge and Stansted Airport.
History
Toponymy The origin of the name Stortford is uncertain. One possibility is that the Saxon settlement derived its name from 'Steorta's ford' or 'tail ford', in the sense of a 'tail', or tongue, of land. The River Stort is named after the town, and not the town after the river. When cartographers visited the town in the 16th century, they reasoned that the town must have been named after the ford in the river and assumed the river was called the Stort.
The town became known as Bishop's Stortford after the manor of Stortford was acquired by William the Norman, Bishop of London, sometime between 1066 and 1075. The manor remained the property of the bishops for many years.
First settlements: pre-Roman and Roman Stortford Archaeological evidence has been found of ancient Mesolithic and Microlithic peoples inhabiting the area that became Stortford. Flakes, cores, and an axe have been found in the Meads and Silverleys areas. Evidence of Bronze Age occupation has been found to the south of the town in the neighbouring parish of Thorley. A 3,000-year-old socketed spearhead has been found at Haymeads Lane within the town. Evidence of settlement has been found on Dunmow Road dating from the Middle Bronze Age through to Romano-British times. The Stortford area appears to have been only sparsely populated in prehistoric times, and was less important than nearby centres of population such as Braughing and Little Hallingbury.
In Roman times, Stortford was on the line of the Roman road, Stane Street, which ran from St Albans to Colchester via Braughing. Construction started around AD 50 on the road. Little evidence from the period survives except for excavations showing a section of the road, evidence of a cremation facility and a burial site. It has been suggested that it is likely there was a Roman fort near the ford at Stortford, but archaeological excavations have found no evidence for such a fort. Any Roman settlement at Stortford was probably abandoned in the 5th century after the Romans withdrew from Britain.Roman Britain Retrieved 7 February 2018.
Refoundation: post-Roman and medieval Stortford
During the Anglo-Saxon era, a new settlement grew up at Stortford. Immediately prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066, Stortford was a manor owned by someone called Edeva the Fair. The manor was sold to William the Norman, Bishop of London, sometime between 1066 and 1075.
The Domesday Book of 1086 records the manor of Storteford as having 29 households. The population in 1086 is thought to have been around 120.
By 1086, the motte-and-bailey Waytemore Castle had been built. It acted as a centre for defence and was also used for civil administration, hosting the Bishop's Court where the bishops of London administered their role as lord of the manor. In 1211, King John had the castle dismantled. Rebuilding of the castle started the following year at John's expense, and he stayed the night in the castle in 1216. By the 15th century, the castle had fallen into disrepair, and the Bishop's Court had moved to Hockerill, to the east of the town.
A priest is mentioned in the Domesday Book, suggesting Stortford was by then a parish. Its parish church, dedicated to St Michael, was rebuilt in the early 15th century. The upper part of the tower and the spire were added in 1812, and the church forms a notable landmark in the town.
In terms of governance, early medieval Stortford was part of the Braughing Hundred. In the early 14th century the town had some of the characteristics of a borough. Between 1306 and 1336 the town was taxed as a borough and had burgesses. It appears to have been a mesne or seigneurial borough subordinate to the bishops of London as lord of the manor; the town does not appear to have been granted a borough charter. Civil authority came to be exercised through two manorial courts at Waytemore Castle and the Rectory. Stortford briefly served as a parliamentary borough, returning members to parliament several times between 1311 and 1340.
Plague and growth: early modern Stortford In the mid 15th century, Stortford was a primarily agricultural community, but had also acquired a tanning industry. By the 16th century, Stortford had become an important centre of the malting industry. Not only were the local soils well suited for grains, but the fact that the town was just 35 miles from London provided an impetus to its development. The economic draw of the maltings and the town's market supported a large number of inns and public houses by the middle of the 16th century pointing to its prosperity.
Over the following hundred years, Stortford grew markedly. The population of Stortford reached 1,500 by 1660. This was despite a series of a dozen plagues between the 1560s and 1660s. Charles I visited the town in 1625, 1629 and 1642.
During the English Civil War in the 1640s, Stortford backed the Parliamentarians, with the Manor of Stortford being sequestered from the bishop of London and sold for £2,845. It was returned to the bishop at the Restoration. The Great Plague of 1666–7 reduced the population to only around 600 by 1700. The effects of the plague were so severe that the town had to appeal to the Hertfordshire magistrates, who responded by levying a rate on every parish in the county for the relief of Bishop's Stortford, Hoddesdon and Cheshunt.
The main north-south route had historically passed through the town centre, running along South Street, Potter Street, North Street and Northgate End. In the 1660s, King Charles II made numerous journeys from London to Newmarket for the races, and he disliked the noise and congestion of Stortford, with its odorous market, maltings and tanneries. Moreover, the route was not always passable, as noted by diarist Samuel Pepys, who made the following entry in his diary on 23 May 1668: 'and so to Bishop's Stafford [sic]. The ways mighty full of water so as hardly to be passed'. As a result, the road from London to Newmarket was diverted to the east of the centre of Stortford in 1670, following a new route which instead ran through the outlying settlement of Hockerill.
The inns of Hockerill become an important overnight location for stop overs for overnight coaches to East Anglia. Further demands for improved roads led to the creation of the Essex and Hertfordshire Turnpike Trust (later Hockerill Turnpike Trust) in 1744 to repair the road between Harlow Bush Common and Stump Cross in Great Chesterford. Later Acts of Parliament extended the term of the Trust and allowed new road construction. From 1785, the mail coaches from London to Norwich ran via Stortford. The improved highways marked the first of the phases of Stortford's growth driven by emergent transport technology.
The second major transport development was the construction of the Stort Navigation, which canalised the River Stort, and opened in 1769. The improvements to the navigation of the Stort were driven by the inability of the malting industry to use the Stort for river transport, which caused significant damage to the local roads and handed a competitive advantage to neighbouring malting areas like Ware, which was linked to London by the River Lea. The work on the canal undertaken by George Jackson (later Sir George Duckett) had the added benefit of alleviating the flooding risk in the town.
Industrial revolution to World War II With the roads and Stort Navigation providing easy access to London markets, industrialisation came to Stortford. The advent of the Stort Navigation brought new industries to the town, with bargemen, lock-keepers, wharfingers, coal and timber merchants all appearing. The malting industry also saw output significantly increase, with brown malt production doubling between 1788 and 1811. Together with national trends in the brewing industry, the 40 malthouses in Stortford in early 1800s Stortford also helped to stimulate the local brewing trade. At the turn of the 19th century, there were 18 brewers in town which in turn boosted the inn trade. The boom in the town in turn boosted the metal working and bricklaying trades, and also aided the general retail trade. In 1791 there were 30 principal traders according to a contemporary directory.
In 1828, a consortium of local businessmen built Bishop's Stortford Corn Exchange, which provided trading accommodation for 65 dealers. By this point, the town directory was listing 200 commercial entries, and 350 by the turn of the century.
The third major transport innovation to have a significant impact upon Stortford was the arrival of the railway. Bishop's Stortford railway station opened in 1842 on the Northern and Eastern Railway, and served as the temporary terminus of the line from London. The line was later extended to Cambridge in 1845, by which time it had become part of the Eastern Counties Railway. The new rail link brought an almost immediate end to the coaching industry, and the Stort Navigation entered terminal decline. The town, though boomed. New residential areas grew up in the New Town (to the south and west of the historic core) and Hockerill (across the river to the east of the historic core) in the decades following the building of the railway. A Bishop's Stortford–Braintree branch line was subsequently built to Braintree, opening in 1864. The Braintree branch line closed to passengers in 1952 and freight in 1972.
The mid-19th century onwards also saw the rapid growth in public utilities, public services and governance in the town. The first gas street lights were installed in the town in the 1830s, in 1855 the New Cemetery was opened, in the 1870s a sewage farm and an isolation hospital were built, while in 1895 the town's first proper hospital was opened. By 1911, the Encyclopædia Britannica referred to the town as having strong educational pedigree: "The high school, formerly the grammar school, was founded in the time of Elizabeth.... There are a Nonconformist grammar school, a diocesan training college for mistresses, and other educational establishments."
During World War II, Stortford was a reception area for evacuees. This did not, however, mean that Stortford was immune from bombings, with 20 bombs recorded as having been dropped in 1940. Targets included Hockerill Training College where three students were killed on 10 October 1940. The railway station was hit twice during the war and a rocket landed near Farnham Road in the town in 1945.
The modern service-industry town In the post-war era the town centre underwent changes with the demolition of a multi-storey car park and surrounding area to make way for a new town centre area and city-type apartments and penthouses on the riverside and elsewhere. Jackson Square (a modern shopping complex) was rebuilt and an extension added.