The Martinet coal mine in Charleroi is only a shadow of itself. At the beginning of the 20th century, le Martinet became a leader in the European coal mine industry.
In the French coal basin of Nord-pas-de-Calais, Germany's Ruhr and Saarland, England, Wales, and Belgium, coal was brought to the surface in hundreds of coal mines for many years. Today, coal mines have become heritage sites or have been demolished.
The Martinet coal mine in Charleroi is only a shadow of itself. At the beginning of the 20th century, le Martinet became a leader in the European coal mine industry.
You first have to wade through a field, sticking brambles and a tyre dump, but then you stand at one of the only concrete headframes in Charleroi: le petit Martinet.
On the outskirts of Mons is the Héribus slag heap, a 138-meter-high spoil heap next to the coal mine of the same name that was active here until 1968.
The concrete remains of the Sauwartan coal mine, which closed in 1938, rest at the edge of the Saint-Ghislain forest in Dour.
The Borinage must once have had the densest railway network in the world, and that was due to the large concentration of coal mines in the region.
To export the millions of tons of coal produced in one of the seven Limburg mines, a coal railway line zigzagged from one coal mine to another.
When Limburg became the El Dorado of Belgium at the beginning of the 20th century, coal mines sprang up like mushrooms. In their wake, garden suburbs and engineers' and directors' homes were built.
At the place where the Leuven professor of geology and mining, André Dumont dug up the Limburg soil from 1901 to find coal, a monument commemorates his find.
The monumental coal preparation plant of Beringen is the showcase of the Beringen coal mine. Yet the four wings of the complex were threatened with demolition for years. However, in 2023, the be-NATURE project was given the green light.
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