The history of mining coal

The Charles Canon cutlery manufactures knives with charcoal handles,

There was a time when slag heaps supplied half of our country's coal for 3 centuries. Today, the mining basin, listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, is home to walking areas and numerous sporting activities.

Emblems of this history and of our department, the slag heaps were formed in response to the mines and thanks to the miners, in fact these are the residues, mining waste, that the miners left on site, and which over time ended up become these immense hills, these famous black pyramids. 

However, it is from the top of the slag heaps, in the open air and overlooking, that we can perhaps best appreciate the mining landscape and its history today.

The mine immediately makes us think of the underground life of the miners, of the famous firedamp blasts, of this shadowy and underground life but also of the blackened faces of the underground miners.

Miners began working very early, sometimes as young as eight years old. They did not go to school and could neither read nor write. They could come from the Maghreb as well as from Eastern Europe.

Their job was to extract coal from mines that could be called black gold.