Overnight near stansted airport any quaint village or town near by?

Hi
We have to over night near Stansted Airport 2 nights in May and do not really want to stay in an Airport hotel if we can stay some where within half an hour. I was thinking of a nice village with a few pubs and a restaurant or a town on the train line within 30 minutes of Stansted.The first evening we will arive in Stansted at 6pm and will need to be at the airport the next day at 2pm. When we return to Stansted later in the week we will arrive in at 10pm but our next day flight is 6.30pm so we could have a good bit of a day somewhere else rather than hanging around an airport hotel. We really do not want to go into London so just looking for somewhere near that we could stroll around during the day and have a bit of food and a drink at night. Any ideas?

Cambridge is easily accessible by train under the airport- easy to get there and very pleasant to visit

We've stayed at The Swan in Great Easton. Convenient and great value.

+1 for Cambridge - very easily accessible from Stansted by train and plenty to do given you'll have quite a lot of time to kill especially on your return journey (too much for sitting around a small village I'd say)