Little Langdale is flanked on the south and southwest by Wetherlam and Swirl How, and to the north and northwest by Lingmoor Fell and Pike of Blisco.

Langdale was previously known as Langdene meaning 'far away wooded valley' and referring to its distance along the flint route from Whitley Bay.

[1] Historically Little Langdale was at the intersection of packhorse routes leading to Ravenglass, Whitehaven, Keswick, Penrith & Carlisle, Ambleside, Hawkshead, and Coniston, Ulverston, Broughton-in-Furness and Barrow in Furness.

Workings in the vicinity include the extensive slate quarries at Hodge Close, Tilberthwaite and the mines on the southern slopes of Wetherlam.

By 1906 the mine was run by the Greenburn and Tilberthwaite Syndicate who were replaced in 1912 by the Langdale Silver, Lead and Copper Company.

[19] The reservoir when built in the 19th century was around 1.6 ha in area but a storm in the winter of 1979-80 caused the dam to burst reducing its height from around 7.5 m to the current 6 m.[22] The effect of the damburst is visible in sediment cores from the downstream Little Langdale Tarn.

[24] Blea Tarn was designated a SSSI in 1989 because of its importance for palaeo-environmental studies relating to the Devensian and Flandrian times.

[30] The nearby Side Pike SSSI was designated in 1977 as one of the few areas in the British Isles where rock demonstrating subaerial volcanic processes are seen.

The farmhouse and tarn are both mentioned in Wordsworth's 'The Solitary': "...to the south Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge Supplied a boundary less abrupt and close; A quiet treeless nook, with two green fields, A liquid pool that glittered in the sun, and one bare Dwelling; one Abode, no more !

It seemed the home of poverty and toil Though not of want: the little fields, made green By husbandry of many thrifty years, Paid cheerful tribute to the moorland House.

The habitat types next to the tarn are 'single-species dominant swamp, acid-poor fen, acidic species-rich marshy grassland, hay meadow and wet woodland'.

[8] Little Langdale Tarn was several times larger at the end of the last ice age, the lost area having become filled with sediment and resulting in the flat farmland beside the current lake.

There is an obvious increase in the sediment accumulation rate with time, the major source being peat pipes and sheep grazing close to Wrynose Beck, a tributary of the Brathay.

[8] The wild fauna of the valley is similar to other nearby valleys and includes the badger, grey squirrel, hare, hedgehog, rabbit, roe deer, red deer, red fox, stoat, weasel, buzzard, cuckoo, house martin, peregrine, raven, ring ouzel, swallow, swift, and slowworm.

[15] The tarn shore supports a population of great crested grebe and the dark green fritillary butterfly.

The habitat varies from floodplain near the Brathay to higher, dryer haymeadow with both being home to a wide variety of herb, grass and flower species.

A socketed Bronze Age axe was found on Low Fell above Greenburn Beck in 1961[37] and remains of an Iron Age nucleated hillfort have been found at Castle Howe – a small mound of volcanic rock – including a hut circle and ditches cut into the rock.

[43] The Bield (a northern English dialect word for house), a 17th-century farmhouse,[44] was home to the Brazilian sculptor Josefina de Vasconcellos for much of her life[2] and Margaret Cropper (1886–1980), "the most underrated Cumbrian poet of the twentieth century" lived at Bridge End.