Stansted Mountfitchet, a Civil Parish and Village in the Uttlesford District of the English County of Essex
The English village of Stansted Mountfitchet is also a civil parish in the Uttlesford district in north-west Essex. It is close to the border of Hertfordshire 35 miles north of London and is served by the Stansted Mountfitchet railway station. The village is 2 miles away from Stansted Airport and 3 miles north of Bishop’s Stortford.
Stansted used to be a Saxon settlement and the name “Stansted” is Anglo-Saxon which means “stony place.”It was not until the Norman conquest that the town got the name Mountfitchet taken from a Norman baron who lived there. A fragment of this baron’s castle survived, and the castle was reconstructed in the 1980s as a tourist attraction.
Food, Shopping and Accommodation in Stansted Mountfitchet
This village is a busy and engaging place for shopping with quite some shops, mostly independent shops than what is expected from a village this size. It does not lack in places to eat and dine either with almost forty eating establishments inside the village. There are mostly restaurants and pubs serving British fare with a few serving either European, Indian, Asian and American food. For a place to stay for visitors, the village hosts four hotels, seven B&Bs and one specialty accommodation.
Things to See and Do in Stansted Mountfitchet
The Mountfitchet Castle and Norman Village of 1066 is a unique open-air museum reconstructed in the 1908s. Here, visitors can travel back in time to genuinely experience life in a Medieval Motte and Bailey Castle. The House on the Hill Toy Museum is claimed to be “the World’s largest toy museum” with more than 80,000 toys on display mostly from the 1950s and the 1960s. It opened in 1991 and is adjacent to the Mountfitchet Castle and Norman Village of 1066. Both museums are owned by Alan Goldsmith. The working windmill located in the village was built in 1787. It is open for public viewing once a month.