Coal mines

The iron headframe was preserved on the site where the French Compagnie des Mines de Liévin laid its first coal mine in 1858.

Four concrete cooling towers flank the former Beringen mine power plant, the only preserved mine cooling towers in the Limburg mining region.

In 1874, a cross-border railway connected the Belgian town of Péruwelz with the French municipality of Anzin. The aim was to export coal from the northern French mining basin to Belgium.

After over half a century, a double staircase climbing up the railway embankment is the only reminder of the vanished Tertre Charbonnage train station.

This truncated metal headframe took miners from the French Meurchin coal mine four hundred metres underground to cut coal.

Fosse Mathilde is one of the oldest preserved mining buildings in the northern French mining basin. The brick complex was built in 1831. The Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin mined coal there until 1862.

The French mining company Compagnie des mines de Vicoigne-Noeux-Drocourt pulled out all the stops in 1886 when it modernised its mining headquarters in Noeux-les-Mines. 

Tuesday, May 15, 1934. In the Fief de Lambrechies mine in Quaregnon (Belgium), 46 miners are trapped like rats 821 metres underground after a mine gas explosion. Eleven rescuers dive into the shaft in search of survivors.

Two metal headframes in Charleroi are a last reminder of the glorious past of the Pêchon coal mine, where coal has been extracted since 1910.