Bishop's Stortford
Bishop's Stortford is a historic market town and civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district, in the county of Hertfordshire, England. It is in the London commuter belt, near the border with Essex, just west of the M11 motorway and Stansted Airport, 28 miles north-east of Charing Cross and 35 minutes by rail from Liverpool Street station. The town had an estimated population of 41,088 in 2020. The district of East Hertfordshire, where the town centre is located, was ranked as the best place to live in the UK by the Halifax Quality of Life annual survey in 2020.
History
Toponymy
The origins of the town's name are uncertain. One possibility is that the Saxon settlement derives its name from 'Steorta's ford' or 'tail ford', in the sense of a 'tail', or tongue, of land. The town became known as Bishop's Stortford due to the acquisition in 1060 by the Bishop of London.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.
First settlements: pre-Roman and Roman Stortford
Little is known of Stortford until the Roman era, with the evidence being small archaeological finds. Limited evidence of ancient Mesolithic and Microlithic peoples in the form of flakes, cores and an axe have been found on the Meads and Silverleys respectively. Most Bronze Age evidence is from the neighbouring parish of Thorley to the south as opposed to Stortford proper, but 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. In Bishop's Stortford: A History, Jacqueline Cooper concludes "existing evidence suggests that the Stortford area was settled only sparsely in prehistoric times, and nearby places like Braughing and Little Hallingbury were of more importance."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. None of the excavations has shown evidence of the Roman fort which likely existed in Stortford. The settlement was probably abandoned in the 5th century after the break-up of the Roman Empire.
Refoundation: post-Roman and medieval Stortford
Following the end of the Roman era, a new Anglo-Saxon settlement grew up on the site.However, little is known about Stortford until the 1060s with the evidence becoming much stronger after the Norman Conquest. In 1060 when William, Bishop of London, bought Stortford manor and estate for £8, leading to the town's modern name. By 1086, the motte-and-bailey Waytemore Castle had been built as a local strongpoint for the area. It acted as a centre for defence and civil administration for roughly 125 years before it was dismantled but not destroyed by King John in 1211. Rebuilding of the castle started the following year at John's expense, and John stayed the night in the castle in 1216. By the 15th century, the castle had fallen into disrepair, and the Bishop's Court moved to Hockerill, to the east of the town.
At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 the village had a population of around 120, and grew to around 700 by the 13th century.
In terms of governance, early medieval Stortford was part of the Braughing Hundred, but acquired burgesses and between 1306 and 1336 was taxed as a borough. No charter survives however, and civil authority passed to two local manor courts at the Castle and the Rectory. Stortford briefly sent two members to parliament in the reigns of Edward II and Edward III, with writs being issued to the town in the 1311–1315, 1318, 1320, 1322 and 1340.
Plague and growth: early modern Stortford
At the start of the early modern period 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 to 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 as a result of a positive net birth rate and migration to the town. This was despite a series of a dozen plagues between the 1560s and 1660s. The town also enjoyed a series of royal visits in the 17th century, with Charles I visiting the town in 1625, 1629 and 1642.
The years following the last of Charles' visits were to prove somewhat turbulent for the town. During the English Civil War Stortford backed the Parliamentarians, with the Manor of Stortford being sequestered from the Bishop of London and sold off for £2,845. It was returned to the Bishop at the Restoration. The Great Plague of 1666–7, and its lasting effects, 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 levied a rate on every parish in the county for the relief of Bishop's Stortford, Hoddesdon and Cheshunt.
Despite the demographic impact of the Great Plague, perhaps the turning point in Stortford's fortunes was the creation of the 'Hockerill by-pass' in 1670. King Charles II had in the 1660s been increasingly travelling from London to Newmarket for the races and 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 . 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, and 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 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 March 1785 the mail coaches ran from London to Norwich via Stortford. Thus, the improved highways marked the first of the phases of Stortford's growth driven by emergent transport technology.
The second major transport development to provide a significant boost to the town 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 who were linked to London by the River Lea. The work on the canal undertaken by George Jackson 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.The vibrancy of the local economy - especially the agricultural trade sector - was demonstrated in 1828 when a consortium of local businessmen built the 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 in 1842. The line initially ran from London Liverpool Street to Stortford, but by 1845 the line was linked to Norwich. The new rail link brought an almost immediate end to the coaching industry, and the Stort Navigation entered terminal decline. The town, though boomed. Massive new residential estates grew up in the New Town and Hockerill in the decades following the building of the railway. A Bishop's Stortford–Braintree branch line was built to Braintree to bring goods into Stortford from the surrounding more rural areas, with the first section to Great Dunmow opening in 1864. The single track line struggled to gain traction, and by 1922 had only seven eastbound and six westbound trains per day. The bus service which started between Stortford and Dunmow in 1920 contributed to the demise of the line which 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.