Little Urswick is a smaller village than Great Urswick but is a distinct and separate village in it’s own right. Known in the area for many years, when the rural villages were home to a continuity of resident families and a local dialect still prevailed, as Lile Ossick, the history of this village appears to at least equal the age of its larger neighbour, Gt Ossick.
Whilst the village no longer has a pub, it does retain it’s pretty village green, which covers an outcrop of Urswick Limestone.
Significantly, Little Urswick was home to the village school with a charter signed by Queen Elizabeth I and dating from 1585, there can be very few villages of the small size of Little Urswick that have, or have had, a Free Grammar School in continuous use for 409 years. On the occasion of the school’s 400th anniversary in 1985, it was visited by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, but nine years later it was to close in favour of a modern building in Great Urswick.