Stansted Mountfitchet is a village and civil parish in the county of Essex, England, near the Hertfordshire border, 30 miles north of London. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 5,533. The village contains 2 primary schools and one high school and numerous places of worship.

Stansted Mountfitchet is situated in north - west Essex, close to Bishop's Stortford.

BAA Stansted Airport, a major international aiport and the third busiest in the UK lies just 2 miles from the Village.

Stansted was a Saxon settlement (the name means stony place in Saxon) and pre dates the Norman invasion of England, although it wasn`t until this invasion that it inherited the suffix Mountfitchet, from the Norman Baron who settled here A small remnant of his castle remains around which a reconstruction of an early Norman castle has been built believed to have been fortified originally in the iron age and susequently by the Romans and Vikings. Construction of the Norman castle began in 1066.

The Village also boasts the House on the Hill toy museum, which is the largest toy museum in Europe.

It is located next to the castle, it opened in 1991 and holds over 80,000 toys, mostly from the 1950s to the 1980s.

A working windmill built in 1787 is in the village and is open to the public on the first Sunday of every month.

During the Second World War the US Air Force constructed an airfield near the village. After the war ended it was subsequently taken over by the British government and developed as a commercial airport. Today BAA London Stansted Airport is accessible by road from junction 8 of the M11 motorway and the A120, and by train direct from London Liverpool Street and Cambridge.

About Stansted