Sheelin was a member of the council of the University of East Anglia, a council member of the Norfolk and Waveney Council of Commerce, chair to The English Rural Housing Association and the Norwich Area Tourism Agency, and a director of Visit Norfolk from 2004 to 2012. Planning and Tourism provided a focus for much of her valuable work within the county.  In 2011, she had the honour of being created an Honorary Alderman and for nine years Lady Knollys was a member of the Norfolk Health Authority.  She was also Norfolk President of Arthritis Care for forty years.  Viscountess Knollys DL was awarded an OBE for Outstanding Services to the Community in 2004. In the same year she was invited to become Vice Lord-Lieutenant for Norfolk, a position she held until 2012.

Sheelin’s vice presidency of IWA was perhaps one of her minor roles, but she attended to it with great conscience and enthusiasm, often travelling the breadth of the country and back in a day to chair a conference or an Annual Meeting for some part of the Association.  She was the perfect diplomat, a well-organised and knowledgeable chair who did much to promote the waterways and wasn’t afraid of tough talking with Government departments.  Her gracious manner, along with her steeliness, meant that even the most hard-bitten – especially politicians – found it almost impossible to disagree with her; and with that graciousness, she achieved so much more than any confrontational protagonist could have done.

[The photo, right, shows Sheelin with former IWA national chairman John Fletcher at IWA 2006 national AGM]