Crowle is situated on one of a series of hills which form the Isle of Axholme, left exposed when the area emerged from the Glacial Lake Humber after the last Ice Age, and is separated from the main raised area to the south by a low-lying strip of land. The Isle of Axholme was formerly surrounded by several rivers, and much of the low-lying marshland was regularly inundated by water. The River Don flowed in a north-easterly direction just to the west of Crowle, to join the River Trent at Adlingfleet, but the hydrology of the area was radically altered in the seventeenth century, when Cornelius Vermuyden was appointed by Charles I to drain Hatfield Chase. Major rivers were diverted, and the numerous canals and drainage ditches that cross the fields give the whole area a Dutch character.