TO MARK the 50th anniversary of the death of the writer and biographer L T C Rolt, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust has partnered with academics from Keele University to host a conference on Friday May 10.
Celebrating his life and continuing legacy of his work. It will examine the full diversity of his written output and chart the story of at least some of the organisations and initiatives he founded and supported.
L T C Rolt, also known as Tom, was a renowned practical engineer and a prolific author. He wrote books and articles on subjects including environmental preservation, industrial history, canals, railways and cars as well as fiction.
Regarded as one of the founders of the 20th-century waterways and railway preservation movements, he actively participated in the foundation of numerous organisations including the Talyllyn Railway, the Association for Industrial Archaeology, the Inland Waterways Association and the Vintage Sports-Car Club, to name just a few.
He wrote some 60 major works as well as many reviews, articles and other publications. Rolt was an early supporter of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums.
The programme includes talks exploring the contribution of Rolt and his wife to organisations they were involved with; Rolt’s contribution to the ghost story genre; and a keynote speech by Victoria Owens, the author of a new biography of Rolt published in April 2024.
One-day and multi-day tickets are available. Multi-day tickets include a drinks reception on the eve of the conference, a dinner on May 10 and a range of organised visits on Saturday May 11.
These include guided tours of Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings and the Iron Bridge, and a themed ‘Winterstoke tour’ of Blists Hill inspired by Rolt’s famous work of fiction. On Saturday May 11 the Vintage Sports-Car Club will also display a selection of sports cars on the car park at Enginuity Display that the public can see for free.
To coincide with the conference, a catalogue of Rolt’s papers, completed in the summer of 2024, will be published online. When Rolt died, his early support for the trust made it a natural choice of home for his manuscripts and working papers.
They arrived in 2006, thanks to a generous grant from a benefactor, and were followed in 2019 by the papers of Rolt’s wife, Sonia, which were donated by her family.
In August 2023, professional archivist Chris Pickford completed a year of work cataloguing and digitising the collection, with the support of members of the Shrewsbury and Wrekin branches of The Arts Society, co-ordinated by Tim Roberts.
Around 30 Arts Society members contributed between over 1000 hours in voluntary time between them. The conference, in partnership with Keele University, marks the completion of this work and coincides with the 50th anniversary of Rolt’s death.
Dr Ben Anderson, senior lecturer in environmental history at Keele University, said: “At a time when heritage was considered narrowly as what remained from the lives of pre-industrial elites, Rolt championed the built environment of industrial change, technology and new social forms.
“His prodigious writing and practical intervention resulted in the first heritage railway and the restoration of thousands of miles of waterways. Somehow, he also found the time to write strikingly modern texts on environmental change, a successful series of ghost stories and a go-to text on railway accidents. His passion for his subjects and accessible writing style have meant that he continues to attract new readers today.”
Nick Booth, collections and learning director at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, said: “Given the role Rolt’s publications played in the emerging field of industrial archaeology and industrial heritage preservation, it was only natural that IGMT should acquire the papers of Tom and Sonia Rolt to be able to catalogue them and make them available to researchers and the wider public for the very first time.
“We are grateful to Chris Pickford and the volunteers for their hard work, and excited to host this conference to celebrate Rolt’s life and examine his legacy 50 years on.”
This conference is part of an ongoing partnership between Keele University and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust to develop student opportunities and open doors for new research into 300 years of industrialisation. The aim is to take advantage of the knowledge in the University and the Trust to tell the story of why the Ironbridge Gorge is so important to industrialisation.
The conference is kindly sponsored by Hire! Freeman, the Friends of Ironbridge Gorge Museum and Shropshire Archaeological & Historical Society – Betton Fund.
To see the conference schedule go to: https://www.ironbridge.org.uk/learn/ltc-rolt-conference/. Tickets are on sale now.
For more information about the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, visit www.ironbridge.org.uk
