CARREAU WENDEL – COAL WASHING PLANT #3 [FR]

Exploration #108 Carreau Wendel site. Initially discovered in Saarland, the Sarrois-Lorrain coalfield was extracted on the French side in Petite-Rosselle from 1856. The site was under concession to the De Wendel family, then head of the French iron and steel empire.

The excavation of the Wendel well no. 1 began in 1865 and was completed three years later. The excavation of Wendel well no. 2 began the same year near Urselsbrunn and was completed in October 1871. In 1935, the discovery of a deep and rich coal deposit started the excavation of Wendel Well No. 3, which was completed in 1947 at a depth of 900m. In 1960, the Wendel mine could extract up to 10,000 tons of coal a day with a workforce of 5,000 miners.

The Wendel 1, 2 and 3 wells ceased operation in 1989 while some of the plants continued to be used until they were finally closed down in May 1991. Most of the mine and wells 1 and 2 have been rehabilitated and turned into a museum, while well 3 and the connected plants are still abandoned.

These photos refer to the washing plant connected to well 3. The Wendel wash-house 3 was at the forefront of modernity. It was able to carry out all the operations of sorting, screening, crushing, separation, grading and storage for a production of 5000 tons of coal per day. Simply put, the role of the washing plant is to prepare the raw coal for marketing. The main operation is to separate the coal from the waste rock (shale). To do this, the washing plant 3 has been equipped with several Wemco washing bins for dense liquids. The raw coal was fed into these drums containing a suspension of magnetite in water. The (less dense) coal floated, while the shale was recovered at the bottom. The shale (coal dust) was then treated in a flotation plant. After the addition of a surfactant, the slime suspended in water was remixed in small tanks. The coal dust, which is hydrophobic, rose to the surface in the form of foam, collected by scrapers.

2026

2017

CHÂTEAU DE VADENCOURT [FR]

Exploration #100. The Château de Vadencourt is located on the territory of the municipality of Vadencourt, in the department of the Somme, north-east of Amiens, France. The castle was built in the 17th century. Henri Pingré de Vraignes acquired the domain of Vadencourt around 1680 and passed it on to his son-in-law, Jean-François de Chassepot de Beaumont, chief captain of the Grande Fauconnerie de France who had the castle rebuilt almost entirely at the beginning of the 18th century. He sold the castle in 1738 to François de Quellerie de Chanteraine who completed its reconstruction in the 1740s. Charles Hourdequin bought the castle in 1921. His granddaughter, Christiane Vandenheede, who died in 2005 bequeathed the castle to the Orphelins apprentices d’Auteuil, who abandoned it.

The Château consists of a central main building framed by outbuildings to the north and a farmhouse to the south. All the buildings are in chalk, except the south elevation of brick and stone. The main building is on the ground floor with a height of floor covered by a roof in the Mansard. The two wings in return of square, sheltering the stables (to the north) and the kitchen with the farmer’s accommodation (to the south), are covered by a roof with long sides, exposed gables. They are supported by two round towers topped with a pepperbox roof. A forged iron gate, executed by Jean-Baptiste Veyren, known as Le Vivarais, marks the entrance to the castle between the two towers. Also the handrail of the staircase is also attributed to Vivarais, in the north-west corner of the body of home.

The south wing has retained its seventeenth-century south wall with alternating beds of brick and stone and projecting quadrangular corner pavilions. The facades, the roof and the main gate are protected as historical monuments (source: wikipedia).

I visited this castle in 2016. After, it was devastated by fire on July 10, 2018, and the left wing was totally devastated. The building was finally sold by auction on June 7, 2019 and restoration works started.

VILLA AMELIE [FR]

Exploration #92 Villa amelie. This villa was owned by the owner of a textile factory nearby. The business was established in 1856 by a frenchman. The founder’s son took over the business in 1899 and in the same year he built the luxurious mansion in sight distance of his factory. The interior of Villa Amelie were very refined, wood paneling in the Gothic style, stucco, tapestries, marble fireplaces and precious decorations. Precious furniture decorate this place. In the attic, a huge library filled with books, showed the power and the wealth of this cultured family.

The textile factory got destroyed during WWII. After WWII the former success was not reappearing and in 1969 the owner had to sell to company to an investment group. It was in service till 1981, when it was finally shutdown. The widow of the last boss lived alone in the mansion until 2000 when she moved to Paris and never came back. Since then the place has been nicely decaying until 2014 when the main building was set ablaze by vandals.

Next to the mansion there was a large chapel with an organ of a church of 1748 and several small rooms (a workshop and a hobby room) which survived by the fire. The organ has already been stripped from valuable metal parts, but even the empty wooden shell looks gorgeous. In addition to the organ there was also a wonderful rare automatic Welte Mignon Piano.

CHATEAU LUMIERE [FR]

Exploration #94 Chateau Lumiere. Chateau Lumiere (literally “castle of light”) is a beautiful 20th Century French Chateau built in Reinaissance style. Probably the castle has this name due to the window in the roof where the light is falling inward.

This grand mansion has been owned by a wealthy family of industrialists. The Strasbourg architects Gottfried Julius Berninger and Gustave Henri Krafft designed this chateau for the tobacco factory owners Jules Burrus and his wife Hermance Hélabert. The building was set with a large gate at its entrance and fenced in equally beautiful metalwork manufactured by the locksmith Leo Feist in Strasbourg. The smelter Val d’Osne created decorative urns to be placed on columns that supported the gate and fencing. Internal decoration by many skilled craftsmen and artists would see stained glass by Camissar, sculpture by Riegger, ironwork by L. Feist and dining furniture by Erhard-Friese. The most iconic feature is a stunning skylight which floods the three-storey entrance hall. Consequently, the foyer is bright and light even on the cloudiest of days.

The Burrus residence was at that time to be known as Chateau Burrus. In 1911 Maurice Burrus inherited the Chateau, when his father died, and settled there. The nationalitation of the tobacco industry and the closure of the Tobacco factory in 1947 led Maurice Burrus to leave the town and retire to Geneva. Subsequently, he sold Chateau Lumiere. Ownership of the chateau then changed hands over the years. It is hard to pinpoint when the house was abandoned. Most people agree that is was likely some time in the 1980’s.

Nowadays the castle has been renovated.

ALIENWORKS [FR]

Exploration #96. Alienworks is a old but quite well preserved sufflerie plant in France on the site of an abandoned steel works. Turbo blowers for blast-furnace blowing were installed in these building.

The ironworks were established in 1890 by the Stumms, a family of ironmasters which already owned a steel mill. The purpose of the plant was to transform the local ore in pig iron. The first blast furnace (U1) was fired up in 1891, while three more (U2-U3-U4) were added in 1897-1898 and two others (U5-U6) in 1904. Between 1986 and 1988 the regional iron and steel industry was organized in sector-oriented subsidiaries and the pig iron production was transferred to onother site. Finally, all operations stopped here in 1991.

Most of the site has been demolished, out of six blast furnaces only one (U4) remains along with this and a few other buildings. The remaining blast furnace is now a visitor attraction after local pressure got it protected. There were more power plants in service to the steel works. This one hosted five turbines connected to different blowers which now remain in good condition. All five turbines are a different design, and are all different sizes. Presumably they had been added at different times to serve specific purposes.