Chevalement de la fosse n° 8 de Dourges dite Cornuault, situé terroir d'en-haut
Monument
Chevalement de la fosse n° 8 de Dourges dite Cornuault, situé terroir d'en-haut, located in Evin-Malmaison (Pas-de-Calais), is a modern edifice built in the 19th-20th centuries. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Period
- Modern (19th-20th century)
- Location
- Evin-Malmaison, Pas-de-Calais, Hauts-de-France
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 50.4380, 3.0214
- Mérimée Reference
- PA62000082
A listed industrial relic from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coalfield, the headframe from pit 8 at Dourges embodies a century of coal, struggles and reconstruction, standing like a steel sentinel over the slag heaps of Évin-Malmaison.
History
In the heart of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coalfield, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the headframe of Dourges pit no. 8 - known as Cornuault - stands as one of the most eloquent witnesses to the French coal mining epic. Located on the upper slopes of Évin-Malmaison, in the Pas-de-Calais department, this listed industrial monument tells the straightforward story of a mine that lived through two world wars, nationalisation and the slow death of northern coal. What makes this headframe truly unique is its material history: the structure visible today is not the original one. In 1968, faced with the obsolescence of the 1926-1927 headframe, engineers from Houillères du Bassin du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais made the pragmatic decision to recover the headframe from shaft no. 3 ter at the Marles mines, giving it an unexpected second life. This metal transplant, rare in the region's mining history, gives the building a doubly valuable heritage dimension. For visitors, the site strongly evokes the world of the "gueules noires": the verticality of the headframe, its pulleys and its extraction building bear witness to the titanic mechanics that enabled men to descend into the bowels of the earth and bring up the coal. The surrounding landscape, marked by slag heaps and corons, reinforces this atmosphere of intact working-class memory. The site is part of a wider heritage site, that of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coalfield, recognised by UNESCO in 2012, making each surviving headframe an irreplaceable fragment of a bygone industrial civilisation. A visit here is a journey into the human condition of the miners who shaped 20th-century France.
Architecture
The headframe of pit no. 8 at Dourges belongs to the large family of wheel-type metal headframes, characteristic structures of industrial mining architecture in the early 20th century. Initially designed for shaft no. 3 ter in the Marles mines, before being relocated to Évin-Malmaison in 1968, it has the slender, functional silhouette typical of this type of structure: a frame of riveted metal sections, organised into successive porticos, topped by wheels (guide pulleys) around which the extraction cables were wound. Its verticality, which could exceed fifteen metres, made it a dominant visual landmark in the flat landscape of the Pas-de-Calais. Traditionally, the pithead's architectural ensemble comprised, around the headframe, an extraction building housing the steam and then electric engine, hanging rooms (miners' changing rooms), lamp rooms and technical buildings. Shaft no. 8 bis had a building that was converted into a ventilation system when the extraction stopped. The 1,800 HP Koepe pulley machine installed in 1968 represented modern extraction technology at the time, characterised by the absence of winding drums in favour of a friction drive pulley - a more compact and efficient system for great depths. The heritage interest of the headframe lies as much in its technical authenticity as in its rarity: with the gradual disappearance of metal structures after the closure of the mines, each surviving headframe constitutes an architectural and industrial document of the utmost importance for understanding the organisation of work and mining civil engineering in the 20th century.
Related Figures
Ingénieurs des Houillères du Bassin du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais (HBNPC) — pilotes de la reconstruction d'après-guerre et de la modernisation du site dans les années 1960Directeurs de la Compagnie des mines de Dourges — initiateurs de l'exploitation du puits n°8 en 1913Mineurs d'Évin-Malmaison — protagonistes anonymes de l'exploitation charbonnière sur six décenniesIngénieurs des mines de Marles — concepteurs du chevalement du puits n°3 ter, transplanté à Dourges en 1968Responsables du service des Monuments Historiques — artisans de la protection du site par arrêté en 2009
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Chevalement de la fosse n° 8 de Dourges dite Cornuault, situé terroir d'en-haut located?
Chevalement de la fosse n° 8 de Dourges dite Cornuault, situé terroir d'en-haut is located in Evin-Malmaison, Pas-de-Calais department, Hauts-de-France region, France.
When was Chevalement de la fosse n° 8 de Dourges dite Cornuault, situé terroir d'en-haut built?
Chevalement de la fosse n° 8 de Dourges dite Cornuault, situé terroir d'en-haut dates back to a period built in the modern era (19th-20th century).
Is Chevalement de la fosse n° 8 de Dourges dite Cornuault, situé terroir d'en-haut open to visitors?
Chevalement de la fosse n° 8 de Dourges dite Cornuault, situé terroir d'en-haut is currently closed to visitors.