Sonia Rolt

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Sonia Rolt OBE (born Sonia South, 15 April 1919 – 22 October 2014) was a British campaigner for the Inland Waterways Association (IWA) and a helper of canal and railway heritage. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2010 for her work in industrial archaeology and heritage.

At the start of World War II, she volunteered to work on the canals and joined the boatmen, hauling coal and steel between Midlands factories and coal pits. The women who worked on the canals wore a badge, and they were nicknamed the Idle Women by the men—an insult they wore with pride. She trained as an actress in London.

In 1945 she married George Smith, a lifelong boatman. When the Inland Waterways Association was founded in 1946 by Tom Rolt and Robert Aickman, she joined the first delegation to the Ministry of Transport and became a council member. In 1950 she helped Tom Rolt with a report on boatmen’s working conditions, but the IWA mainly focused on leisure use of the canals, so she and Tom were pushed out.

Tom later left the waterways and Sonia left the canals too. They eventually married after Sonia’s marriage to George Smith ended, and they settled at Stanley Pontlarge, where they had two sons. Sonia helped restore their home, worked with the Landmark Trust as furnishing manager and library curator, and helped preserve the Talyllyn Railway.

After Tom’s death in 1974, Sonia gradually repaired her relationship with the IWA, receiving honorary membership in 1983 and becoming a vice president in 1993. She edited Tom’s autobiographical works, published A Canal People and The Photographs of Robert Longden in 1997, and worked with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the National Trust, and on the restoration of old ships.

Sonia Rolt died in 2014, remembered as a devoted defender of canal heritage and historic transport.