Former Martinet mining site

The Martinet site, rue de Roux in Monceau-sur-Sambre, is an emblematic site in Charleroi. The integrated ruin of the old engine room of the extraction shaft is a monument to coal mining, citizen mobilization, the deployment of post-industrial landscaped parks.
Supported at arm's length during 40 years of mobilization by a committee of residents concerned about its environment, the site, owned by the City of Charleroi, extends over 50 hectares of natural space reclaimed from a former industrial wasteland.
The enhancement of mining buildings is a reminder today that the mining industry was equipped with remarkable buildings.
Operated from the 18th century, the site experienced a large-scale industrial deployment from the end of the 19th century under the name Société anonyme des charbonnages de Monceau-Fontaine and du Martinet.
In the thirties, the "n ° 4" of the Société de Monceau-Fontaine included, in addition to an extraction headquarters, a gigantic sorting-washing place and a ball factory which made the site one of the most modern in Europe.
1,200 workers work there on break: 6.00-14.00 / 14.00-22.00 / 22.00-6.00.
In the 1950s, Monceau-Fontaine, which had become the most powerful mining company in Belgium, was at its peak, with 12 operating offices, 10,000 jobs and a concession that ran under the 25 neighboring towns.
From the 1960s onwards, competition from imported products such as natural gas and petroleum got the better of the coal industry.
The Martinet extraction well shut down in 1967. The sorting-wash house will operate until 1979. Abandoned, the buildings were in ruins when the last beautiful flower was dismantled in 1995.
As early as the 1950s, with a view to developing the slag heaps, afforestation was carried out on an experimental basis on the northern slope of the large slag heap, like what was already done in the industrial basins of the Rhur. In addition, pioneer vegetation quickly developed there as soon as the spills ended. Wetlands, reed beds, ponds with calamitic toads are subject to ecological management.
In the 1980s, when the slag heaps were deemed "now useless", companies prospected with a view to recovering materials such as shale and residual coal. But the exploitation techniques induce many nuisances for local residents (cartage, dust, environmental degradation) and generally lead to the total disappearance of the slag heap.
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