The village lies half a mile (800 m) north-west of the lake of Elter Water, from which it derives its name.

The first two activities continue, while evidence of the latter survives in the grounds of the Langdale Estate,[3] a holiday development founded in the 1930s and redeveloped as a timeshare in the 1980s.

[4] In the 1880s, the Guild of St George founded by John Ruskin revived small-scale linen spinning and weaving in Langdale, at a cottage in Elterwater, led by Albert Fleming and Marion Twelves and continued by Elizabeth Pepper.

This three-dimensional artwork, and the entire wall on which it was installed, was moved to the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle in 1965.

Watercolour painter Thomas Frederick Worrall's painting Elterwater Tarn and Langdale Pikes is in the Bishop of Carlisle's house in Keswick.