Lowick is a village and civil parish in the South Lakeland district of the English county of Cumbria. Prior to 1 April 1974 it was part of Lancashire, the change being as a result of the Local Government Act 1972. The village appears in records as early as 1202 as Lofwik, and later as Laufwik: the name derives from the Old Norse "Lauf-vík". The parish is made up of several small hamlets, including Woodgate, Lowick Bridge and Lowick Green. Lowick Green has a red phone box, one of a number surviving in rural Britain. There is a pub in Lowick called 'The Red Lion' There is another pub called 'The Farmers Arms', on the border between Lowick and the next small village, Spark Bridge. The village had its own primary school until 2004 when Cumbria County Council closed the school with 18 pupils. Numbers had fallen increasingly over the latter years and a number of local families already sent their children to larger schools nearby. A group of local people fought against the closure. Prominent members of the local community received looms and wheelbarrows from the school as it closed. After the closure the group operated an independent school for one year, at the time, this gained sponsorship from "The Cooperative" and became the first independent school in England. The building is now used by an outdoor activities company - There is an annual event in the village called the Lowick Show, known locally as the Lile Royal, which attracts visitors from nearby towns and villages. There are games, stalls, cattle, ferret and dog shows, as well as competitions for bakery, and arts and crafts. In 2005 there was a minor controversy around the disqualification of a prominent local knitter for allegedly entering non-arran weight yarn into the competition. Every May bank holiday one household in the village hosts a 'duck race', whereby plastic ducks are put into the stream in the house's garden and 'raced' against each other. The race is followed by food and drink until late in the evening, even for the ducks. In 2002 a competitor was disqualified when it was discovered that he had greased his ducks with lard from the Berkshires in order to speed their progress through the weir at Lowick Bridge. The crime rate in the village is low.
