Bishop's Stortford is a market town in Hertfordshire, England, located 27 miles northeast of London. The village emerged as a small Roman settlement on Stane Street (from Hertfordshire to Colchester), and it was abandoned following the end of Roman rule in Britain. The Anglo-Saxons founded a village called Steortford, meaning "the ford at the tongue of land", and the River Stort was named after the town. The town had 120 residents in 1086, and, despite plague outbreaks in the 16th and 17th centuries, the town came to have a population of 1,200. By 1801, Bishop's Stortford was a market town, and the railway arrived in 1842. By 1901, the town had a population of over 7,000 people. During World War II, many Londoners were evacuated to Bishop's Stortford, and it became a commuter town after the war, with its population reaching 13,000 by 1951. By 2011, the town's rail links to London and Cambridge led to Bishop's Stortford having a population of 38,000. As part of the "Hertford and Stortford" parliamentary constituency, Bishop's Stortford was a Conservative Party stronghold.
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