This had been created in 1872, giving public health and local government responsibilities for rural areas to the existing boards of guardians of poor law unions.

In July 1894, a joint committee of Hertfordshire and Essex County Councils narrowly decided (on the chairman's casting vote) to transfer the ten Essex parishes of the Bishop's Stortford Rural Sanitary District into Hertfordshire.

[3] The proposal was not popular with the Essex parishes, and at a public meeting in October 1894 the councils reversed the decision, deciding instead to allow the Essex parishes to become a separate rural district called the Stansted Rural District.

However, even before it came into being discussions began on whether to rename it after either Sawbridgeworth, its most populous parish, or Much Hadham as a central place within the district.

[10][11] In 1926 the two councils and the board of guardians built a new headquarters at 2 Hockerill Street (later also called Riverside House), a neo-Tudor building beside the River Stort.