The Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin: Down the Pit at Lewarde
Hauts-de-France, France
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250
XP
+100 France
= 350 total
1 day
The Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin: Down the Pit at Lewarde
250 + 100 XP
On 30 June 2012 UNESCO listed 353 separate elements across 109 sites of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais mining basin, a worked landscape of 1,200km² spread over 87 communes from Enguinegatte to Quiévrechain. What went on the list says what this country is: seventeen pits, twenty-one headframes, fifty-one slag heaps, fifty-four kilometres of railway embankment, three stations, a hundred and twenty-four miners' estates, thirty-eight schools and forty square kilometres of landscape. The Houillères picked the Fosse Delloye at Lewarde in 1973 for a museum of the mine, and it opened in 1984.
Required Activities
1
of 5
Work round the surface of the Fosse Delloye and find the parts protected by the 2009 monuments order: the headframes over pits 1 and 2, the compressor hall, the glazed hall, the fan room, the screening plant and the walkways between them
2
of 5
Take the hour-long guided descent through the reconstructed galleries and follow the working face as it changes, from the earliest pits to the mechanised 1980s coalfaces at the far end
3
of 5
Go into the documentation centre and ask what is in the 2,700 linear metres of archive the museum holds — 7,000 books, 550,000 photographs, 500 films and 300 sound recordings, including the testimony it still gathers from former miners
4
of 5
Drive the few kilometres north to Rieulay and walk terril no 144, the flat heap in the Scarpe valley raised mainly out of the waste of the De Sessevalle and Lemay pits
5
of 5
Find the base of the cavalier heaps 220 and 220A beside the pit, and work out what they were for: long, narrow, deliberately level banks of spoil built so the coal trains could run flat and cross roads and canals on the level
Work round the surface of the Fosse Delloye and find the parts protected by the 2009 monuments order: the headframes over pits 1 and 2, the compressor hall, the glazed hall, the fan room, the screening plant and the walkways between them
Take the hour-long guided descent through the reconstructed galleries and follow the working face as it changes, from the earliest pits to the mechanised 1980s coalfaces at the far end
Go into the documentation centre and ask what is in the 2,700 linear metres of archive the museum holds — 7,000 books, 550,000 photographs, 500 films and 300 sound recordings, including the testimony it still gathers from former miners
Drive the few kilometres north to Rieulay and walk terril no 144, the flat heap in the Scarpe valley raised mainly out of the waste of the De Sessevalle and Lemay pits
Find the base of the cavalier heaps 220 and 220A beside the pit, and work out what they were for: long, narrow, deliberately level banks of spoil built so the coal trains could run flat and cross roads and canals on the level
Before you go
The museum closes for the whole of January (5 to 31 January in 2026) and on 1 January, 1 May and 25 December, and it is shut every Monday from 15 November to the end of February — winter opening is 1pm to 5pm Tuesday to Saturday. The guided gallery tour lasts an hour, runs at regular departures and cannot be booked in advance, so allow for a wait. Adult admission is 14.50 euros, 40 euros for a family of four.
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XP Breakdown
Challenge XP
250 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
350 XP
Country bonus earned on completion of your first challenge in France.
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