Ancien site minier de Wallers-Arenberg
Monument
Ancien site minier de Wallers-Arenberg, located in Wallers (Nord), is a medieval landmark built in the Middle Ages. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Period
- Medieval (11th-15th century)
- Location
- Wallers, Nord, Hauts-de-France
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 50.3849, 3.4248
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00107930
Three headframes from different eras, a mill unique in the North and the setting for the film Germinal: Wallers-Arenberg is the living memory of French coal.
History
In the heart of the Nord coalfield, the former Wallers-Arenberg mining site stands out as one of the most complete and moving industrial testimonies in France. Where generations of black faces descended each morning into the bowels of the earth, three steel and concrete headframes still stand, silent guardians of a workers' epic that lasted almost a century. It's not just a frozen museum: it's a living site, full of sweat, coal and collective history. What makes Arenberg absolutely unique is the coexistence of three headframes built at radically different times and using radically different techniques. From the first shaft built before 1914 to the monumental portico of shaft no. 3 erected in 1961 - the highest in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coalfield - visitors can take a few steps through the entire evolution of an industry over more than sixty years. Nowhere else in the department can you see so clearly, in the landscape itself, the gradual modernisation of coal mining. The experience of visiting the site is striking. You walk past the shower-bath and lamp-room buildings, enter the hanging room where the miners hung up their clothes before going down, and take the covered metal walkway that led the men directly to the mill. Each area tells the story of a gesture, a routine, a life. The mill, the only remaining example in the whole of the Nord department, is in itself a monument within a monument. The Arenberg setting also bears the imprint of the cinema: in 1994, Claude Berri recreated Zola's world here to shoot Germinal, one of the most ambitious films in French cinema. The sets have since disappeared, but the atmosphere remains intact. As part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coalfield, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, the site resonates with a special dignity, that of hard work and a memory that deserves to be passed on.
Architecture
The architecture of the Wallers-Arenberg site is that of heavy industry in all its chronological diversity. Shaft No. 1 and its extraction machine building, dating from 1900-1903, illustrate the brick industrial style of the Belle Époque: meticulous masonry, round-headed windows, functional sobriety inherited from the great factories of the North. The 1920 metal headframe on top, with its steel lattice structure, belongs to the generation of traditional headframes whose characteristic silhouettes have long marked the skyline of the coalfield. Shaft No. 3 and its portal headframe from 1961 are a radical departure from this vocabulary. Constructed in reinforced concrete according to the principles of post-war industrial engineering, this massive, rectilinear portal is the highest in the basin. It spans directly over the mill building, a technical solution that eliminates the need for external overhead cables and rationalises flows. The mill itself, the only intact example in the department, is a single-storey building with horizontal lines, incorporating a complex machinery of pulleys and drums. The social buildings complete the ensemble in a coherent fashion: the shower-baths and the lamp room form a main building extended by two wings forming the hanging room, characteristic of the paternalistic organisation of 20th-century mines. A covered metal footbridge, a remarkable feature from the point of view of civil engineering, links this complex to the mill, protecting the miners from the elements on their daily journey. The brick-faced concrete-framed electricity substation and the concrete dynamite blasting plant, isolated on the edge of the site, complete this strikingly coherent body of industrial architecture.
Related Figures
Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin — exploitante fondatrice du site à partir des permis de 1876Claude Berri — réalisateur du film Germinal tourné sur le site en 1994Émile Zola — auteur de Germinal (1885), roman dont l'atmosphère a trouvé dans Arenberg son incarnation cinématographiqueGérard Depardieu — acteur principal du film Germinal, incarnant le personnage de MaheuRenaud — acteur dans Germinal, ayant contribué à la notoriété nationale du siteLes Charbonnages de France — exploitants nationalisés du site de 1946 à sa fermeture en 1989
Tags
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Ancien site minier de Wallers-Arenberg located?
Ancien site minier de Wallers-Arenberg is located in Wallers, Nord department, Hauts-de-France region, France.
When was Ancien site minier de Wallers-Arenberg built?
Ancien site minier de Wallers-Arenberg dates back to a period built in the Middle Ages (11th-15th century).
Is Ancien site minier de Wallers-Arenberg open to visitors?
Ancien site minier de Wallers-Arenberg is currently closed to visitors.