Nord-Pas-de-Calais ; Picard: Nord-Pas-Calés); is a former administrative region of France. Since 1 January 2016, it has been part of the new region Hauts-de-France. It consisted of the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. Nord-Pas-de-Calais borders the English Channel (west), the North Sea (northwest), Belgium and Picardy (south). Until the 17th century, the history of the North was largely in common with the history of Belgium, that of a land that “for almost a thousand years served as a battlefield for all of Europe.” The majority of the region was once part of the historical Southern Netherlands, but gradually became part of France between 1477 and 1678, particularly during the reign of king Louis XIV. The historical French provinces that preceded Nord-Pas-de-Calais are Artois, French Flanders, French Hainaut and (partially) Picardy. These provincial designations are still frequently used by the inhabitants. The former administrative region was created in 1956 under the name "Nord" and maintained that name until 1972 when "Pas-de-Calais" was added. This remained unchanged until its dissolution in 2016.
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures are referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.
Lens is a city in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of the main towns of Hauts-de-France along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras and Douai. The inhabitants are called Lensois.
Liévin is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The inhabitants are called Liévinois.
Carvin is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France.
Loos-en-Gohelle is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France.
A mining accident is an accident that occurs during the process of mining minerals or metals. Thousands of miners die from mining accidents each year, especially from underground coal mining, although accidents also occur in hard rock mining. Coal mining is considered much more hazardous than hard rock mining due to flat-lying rock strata, generally incompetent rock, the presence of methane gas, and coal dust. Most of the deaths these days occur in developing countries, and rural parts of developed countries where safety measures are not practiced as fully. A mining disaster is an incident where there are five or more fatalities.
The history of coal mining goes back thousands of years, with early mines documented in ancient China, the Roman Empire and other early historical economies. It became important in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was primarily used to power steam engines, heat buildings and generate electricity. Coal mining continues as an important economic activity today, but has begun to decline due to the strong contribution coal plays in global warming and environmental issues, which result in decreasing demand and in some geographies, peak coal.
A spoil tip is a pile built of accumulated spoil – waste material removed during mining. Spoil tips are not formed of slag, but in some areas, such as England and Wales, they are referred to as slag heaps. In Scotland the word bing is used. In North American English the term is mine dump or mine waste dump.
Bruay-sur-l'Escaut is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.
The Courrières mine disaster, Europe's worst mining accident, caused the death of 1,099 miners in Northern France on 10 March 1906. This disaster was surpassed only by the Benxihu Colliery accident in China on 26 April 1942, which killed 1,549 miners. A coaldust explosion, the cause of which is not known with certainty, devastated a coal mine operated by the Compagnie des mines de houille de Courrières. Victims lived nearby in the villages of Méricourt, Sallaumines, Billy-Montigny, and Noyelles-sous-Lens. The mine was 2 km (1 mi) to the east of Lens, in the Pas-de-Calais département.
Aniche is a commune in the Nord département in the Hauts-de-France region of northern France.
The Bois du Cazier was a coal mine in what was then the town of Marcinelle, near Charleroi, in Belgium which today is preserved as an industrial heritage site. It is best known as the location of a major mining disaster that took place on August 8, 1956 in which 262 men, including a large number of Italian labourers, were killed. Aside from memorials to the disaster, the site features a small woodland park, preserved headframes and buildings, as well as an Industrial Museum and Glass Museum. The museum features on the European Route of Industrial Heritage and is one of the four Walloon mining sites listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2012.
The Saint-Étienne Mine Museum is a French museum founded in 1991 in the city of Saint-Étienne in the French department of the Loire situated in the Rhône-Alpes region. It presents the facilities of a former coalmine. The site is registered as a historical monument since 2011.
The Compagnie des mines d'Anzin was a large French mining company in the coal basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France. It was established in 1756 and operated for almost 200 years.
The Compagnie des mines de Bruay was a French coal extraction company which operated in the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin between 1850 and 1946. It operated 18 mine shafts at eight production sites in Bruay-la-Buissière, Haillicourt, Divion and Houdain.
The Compagnie des mines de Béthune, sometimes called the sometimes called the Compagnie de Grenay after the name of the concession, was a French coal mining company in the Pas-de-Calais that was established in 1851 and nationalized in 1946. The company had 11 mines, each with one or more shafts for extraction of coal or ventilation. It had a large facility for screening and washing raw coal, and for producing coke and other secondary products. During World War I (1914–1918) the front line crossed the mining concession, with the northern part occupied by the Germans, but despite constant shelling production of coal continued. Coke production peaked at 565,195 tons in 1928. The company had two thermal electricity plants, and operated 159 kilometres (99 mi) of railway tracks. At its peak the company was one of the largest coal mining operations in the region, with 12,640 employees in 1945.
The Notre-Dame Pit was one of the principal mine shafts of the Ronchamp Mining Company, located in North-Eastern France in the hamlet of Éboulet, the commune of Champagney, and the department of Haute-Saône. The pit was created by a rival company, The Forge Masters, which had owned the hamlet of Éboulet's mines since 1851, fifteen years before the Ronchamp Mining Company acquired them. As its supply of coal dwindled, the mine was converted into a water well used for pumping water used in the mining process to several other nearby mines. The pit was plugged in 1958, when all the coal mines formerly owned by Ronchamp were closed by the government utility, Électricité de France.
In urbanism, a coron is a historical type of working-class housing found in Northern France and Belgium. Emerging during the Industrial Revolution, corons were a form of low-cost dwelling commonly found in coal mining and steelmaking regions of Wallonia and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais. Originating as a form of vernacular architecture, their design and materials were increasingly upgraded over time and some were even constructed as parts of purpose-built model villages. They can be considered a counterpart of the back-to-back housing found in industrial parts of the United Kingdom.
The 1941 Nord-Pas-de-Calais miners' strike, also known as the patriotic strike of the 100,000 miners of Nord-Pas-de-Calais or the 10-day strike, lasted from the 27th of May to the 10th of June 1941 and was the first large-scale strike under Nazi occupation. It was one of the largest and longest strike to occur in Nazi-occupied Europe.
