Bowland Tunnel artist’s impressions

Additional Information

The images above were scanned from high-quality prints. The original paintings were by Clarence Woodburn.

The paintings were presumably commissioned by the Cementation Company, which displayed them on the walls of its offices in Nottingham.  In 1970, the Cementation Company became part of the diverse business conglomerate Trafalgar House, which was itself absorbed in 2001 by Skanska, a Swedish-based multinational construction and development company.

Click here for the Haweswater Aqueduct story

Clarence Woodburn – architectural and engineering illustrator

One of his early works has a note on its reverse: “Birmingham College of Art, Margaret Street, 1933” – probably where he trained.

Other watercolour works sold a few years ago indicate the range of projects he worked on:
Silo at Prudhoe, Northumberland
St. Helier Hospital, Sutton, Surrey
Khorramshahr Bridge, Iran (built in 1960) “The bridge has 616 meters length and 6 meters width”

A fine watercolour of “St Margaret’s Seat, Scotland” was auctioned in 2017, the style reminiscent of Paul Nash, so perhaps a 1940s or 50s work. A watercolour sketch has also been sold, which was the basis for “a painting commissioned by Lady Cadbury” – no date here, but a Birmingham connection and the possibility that the commission may have come about after she saw his college work. He retired to Cornwall, and many watercolour landscapes of that area date from the period 1970-75.

A large number of his works were sold at auction in 2010.

Acknowledgments

Images reproduced with the kind permission of Fred Hughes, who rescued the prints from an office-clearout skip, and donated them to Tatham History Society.
Fred joined the Cementation Company ten years after the Bowland Tunnel was completed, and worked for them for 30 years.