Hauts-de-France

A century ago, in 1925, the Guenot & Duprez cotton mill appeared on the scene in the French textile town of Tourcoing.

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

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.

The French village of Remenauville had 138 inhabitants living and working in the shadow of its neo-Gothic church tower in the early 20th century. But World War I changed everything.

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 Schengen Agreement has allowed free movement of people within the European Union since 1992. As internal borders disappeared, customs posts along the border became utterly useless.

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. 

In the 20th century, the French commune of Bachy had more than 40 customs officers keeping an eye on the train station and along the approach roads from Belgium.

You bump into this brick obelisk at the edge of a forest in northern France. The monument was erected more than two centuries ago.