Tom Rolt Centenary Celebration Events

2010 sees the centenary of the birth of Tom Rolt, one of IWA’s “founding fathers”.  Born in Chester in 1910, he trained as an engineer and had a passion for Victorian engineering of all kinds.  As well as campaigning for the waterways he was also a lifelong vintage car and steam railway enthusiast.

From working within the engineering sector, Tom moved on to become a prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction. However, many of those titles reflected his enthusiasm for engineering structures and those who had designed and built them. One of his first books, “Narrow Boat” , which chronicled his tour of the inland waterways in 1939 with his wife, Angela, on the restored Shropshire Union narrowboat  “Cressy”, prompted the formation of the Inland Waterways Association in 1946.

Tom Rolt at the helm of Cressy steers her under Tunnel Lane Bridge, at Lifford near King's Norton. The Great Western Railway (GWR), the owners of the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal, had been challenged by Tom; because they had replaced a former draw bridge with one too low to allow boat passage, even though a statutory right of navigation existed on the canal. A question in parliament, raised by Lord Methuen who had recently joined the IWA, and a notice of intention to navigate made by Tom Rolt had forced the GWR to lift the bridge to allow Cressy to pass.

This action set the tone of IWA campaigning for many years as they fought to overcome, the then official attitudes, to the inland waterways.