Sonia Rolt, who has died aged 95, was the grande dame of Britains waterways, a link between their harsh working past and their leisured present. She also campaigned for an appreciation of the wider legacy of the industrial revolution for the architecture of coal and steam and for the preservation of even older buildings. But her first love remained the narrowboats of the cut. She even married into the waterways, twice.
Born in New York to British colonial parents, and orphaned when young, Sonia had a peripatetic childhood and a convent-school education. She trained in acting at the London Theatre Studio but, under the second world wars directed labour scheme, was trapped in a factory wiring bombers until a flatmate saw a Ministry of Transport advertisement saying women may volunteer for the carrying of goods on the Grand Union canal they would be paid by tonnage, and under nobodys orders.
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