Early life Tom Rolt was born in
Chester to a line of Rolts "dedicated to hunting and procreation". His father Lionel had settled back in Britain in
Hay-on-Wye after working on a cattle station in Australia and a plantation in India, and joining (unsuccessfully) in the
Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. However, Lionel Rolt lost most of his money in 1920 after investing his capital in a company that failed, and the family moved to a pair of stone cottages in
Stanley Pontlarge in Gloucestershire. Rolt studied at
Cheltenham College and at the age of 16 he took a job learning about steam traction, before starting an apprenticeship at the
Kerr Stuart locomotive works in
Stoke-on-Trent, where his uncle, Kyrle Willans, was chief development engineer. His uncle bought a wooden horse-drawn narrow
flyboat called
Cressy and fitted it with a steam engine. Then, having discovered that the steam made steering through tunnels impossible, he replaced the engine with a
Ford Model T engine. This was Rolt's introduction to the canal system.
Cars After Kerr Stuart went into liquidation in 1930, Rolt became jobless and turned to vintage sports cars, taking part in the
veteran run to Brighton, and acquiring a succession of cars including a 1924
Alvis 12/50 two seater "duck's back" that he kept for the rest of his life. Rolt bought into a motor garage partnership next to the Phoenix public house in
Hartley Wintney in Hampshire. Its breakdown vehicle was an adapted 1911
Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. Together with the landlord of the Phoenix, Tim Carson, and others, Rolt formed the
Vintage Sports-Car Club in 1934. He also founded the
Prescott hill climb. His 1950 book
Horseless Carriage contains a diatribe against the emergence of
mass production in the English car industry, claiming that "mass production methods must develop towards the ultimate end [of automatic procreation of machines by machines], although by doing so, they involve either the supersession of men by machines or a continual expansion of production". His preference for traditional craftsmanship helps to explain his subsequent career.
Cressy In 1936 Kyrle Willans bought back
Cressy, which he had earlier sold, and several trips on the waterways convinced Rolt that he wanted a life afloat. He persuaded Angela Orred to join him in this idyll. She was a young blonde in a white polo-necked sweater who had swept into his garage in an
Alfa Romeo in 1937, and been caught up in the vintage car scene. Rolt bought
Cressy from his uncle and set about converting her into a boat that could be lived on, the most notable addition being a bath. During the summer of 1939 Rolt and Angela decided to defy her father's objections and married in secret on 11 July. Work on
Cressy was completed at
Tooley's Boatyard in
Banbury, and on 27 July Rolt and his wife set off up the
Oxford Canal.
War The outbreak of the
Second World War intervened and Rolt, a pacifist at heart, immediately signed up at the Rolls-Royce factory at
Crewe to work on the production line of the
Spitfire's
Merlin engine. He was saved from the tedium of the production line by the offer of a job with the Aldbourne Engineering Company , Wiltshire. The Rolts headed south in
Cressy through storms, reaching Banbury a day before the canals were frozen over for the winter. In March 1940 the Rolts negotiated the
River Thames in flood and headed up the
River Kennet to reach
Hungerford, near Aldbourne. Rolt then worked there for more than a year. The Rolts' first four-month cruise was described in a book that Rolt initially called
Painted Ship. He sent the manuscript to several publishers, but it did not find acceptance, as it was felt that there was no market for books about canals. It was not until after a magazine article he wrote came to the attention of the countryside writer
H. J. Massingham that Rolt's book was published, in December 1944, under the title
Narrow Boat.
Inland Waterways Association Narrow Boat had an immediate success with critics and public, leading to fan mail arriving at the Rolts' boat, which was then moored at
Tardebigge in
Worcestershire. Two of the letters were from
Robert Aickman and
Charles Hadfield, who were both to figure prominently in the next phase of Rolt's life, when he became a campaigner. He invited Aickman and his wife Ray to join the Rolts on
Cressy. Aickman later described the journey with the Rolts as "the best time I have ever spent on the waterways". It was on this journey that they decided to form an organisation that a few weeks later, in May 1946, at Aickman's flat in London, was named the
Inland Waterways Association, with Aickman as chairman, Hadfield as vice-chairman and Rolt as secretary. The inland waterways of Britain were nationalised in 1947 and faced an uncertain future. The traditional life that Rolt had described seemed to be threatened with extinction. Rolt pioneered direct action on the
Stratford-upon-Avon Canal, which stopped
British Waterways from closing it; organised a hugely successful Inland Waterways Exhibition, which started in London but toured the country; and proposed the first boat rally at
Market Harborough in
Leicestershire. Aickman, who had a private income, was working full time on the campaign, while Rolt, who had only his writing to support him and was still living aboard
Cressy, struggled to meet all his commitments. Eventually he fell out with Aickman over the latter's insistence that every mile of canal should be saved. In early 1951 Rolt was expelled from the organisation he had inspired. By this time he had decided to bring his life on
Cressy to an end and return to his family home in Stanley Pontlarge. Angela departed to continue the mobile life, joining
Billy Smart's Circus.
Talyllyn Railway A letter Rolt had sent to the
Birmingham Post in 1950 resulted in the formation of the
Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society, and he now threw himself into its activities, becoming chairman of the company that operated the railway as a tourist attraction. "By the time the fateful letter terminating his IWA membership arrived, he was already busy issuing and stamping passengers' tickets from the little station in
Towyn". His time at Talyllyn gave rise to his book
Railway Adventure (1953), which became the basis for the
Ealing comedy film
The Titfield Thunderbolt. Rolt married again, to
Sonia Smith (
née South), a former actress. During the war she had become one of the amateur boatwomen who worked the canals and had married a boatman. She had been on the council of the IWA. They had two sons, Tim and Dick, and continued to live in Stanley Pontlarge until Rolt's death in 1974. His grave lies in the village churchyard.
Author Rolt became a full-time writer in 1939. The 1950s were Rolt's most prolific time as an author. His best-known works were biographies of
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which stimulated a revival of interest in a forgotten hero,
George and
Robert Stephenson, and
Thomas Telford. His classic study of historic railway accidents,
Red for Danger, became a textbook for numerous engineering courses. Rolt produced many works about subjects that had not previously been considered the stuff of literature, such as
civil engineering,
canals, and railways. In his later years he produced three volumes of autobiography, only one of which was published during his lifetime. Rolt also published
Sleep No More (1948) a collection of supernatural horror stories featuring
ghosts,
possession and
atavism. These were modelled after the work of
M. R. James, but used industrial settings such as railways instead of James' "antiquarian" settings.
The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural described
Sleep No More as "An exceptionally original collection of ghost stories ... Rolt had the special talent of combining folkloric spontaneity with artful sophistication." Several of Rolt's stories were anthologised; they were also adapted as radio dramas. His "Winterstoke" (1954) is a unique perspective on the development of modern Britain from the
feudal system via the
dissolution of the monasteries. ==Achievements and honours==