Stansted Mountfitchet is an English village and civil parish in Uttlesford district, Essex, near the Hertfordshire border, north of London. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 5,533, increasing to 6,011 at the 2011 census. By the 2021 census it had increased to 8621. The village is served by Stansted Mountfitchet railway station. Stansted Mountfitchet is situated in north-west Essex near the Hertfordshire border and 3 miles (5 km) north of Bishop's Stortford. Stansted Airport is from the village. The village has three primary schools (Bentfield Primary School, St Mary's (C of E) Primary School and Magna Carta Primary Academy) and one high school which was renamed the Forest Hall School in September, 2013. History Stansted was a Saxon settlement (the name means 'stony place' in Anglo-Saxon) that predates the Norman conquest. In the 1086 Domesday Book, Stansted was in the ancient hundred of Uttlesford. It was one of many villages and manors controlled by the powerful Robert Gernon de Montfichet (from Montfiquet in Calvados, Normandy), so began to be referred to as Stansted Mountfitchet to differentiate it from similarly named places. 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 subsequently by the Romans and Vikings, construction of the Norman castle began in 1066. Lord Mountfitchet is also considered the 11th century builder of Montfichet's Tower in London. St Mary the Virgin's Church, built in the 1120s, is a redundant church under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. The brick west tower was added in 1692. A chapel of ease dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist was built in 1889 nearer the centre of the village and is now the village church. Stansted Hall was built in 1871. Landmarks Other village attractions include the House on the Hill Toy Museum, which its owners claim "is the largest toy museum in the World". Located next to Mountfitchet Castle and Norman Village of 1066, both attractions are owned by Alan Goldsmith. The museum opened in 1991 and holds over 80,000 toys, mostly from the 1950s to the 1990s. A working windmill built in 1787 is in the village, and is open to the public once a month. During the Second World War, the US Air Force constructed an airfield near the village. After the war ended,