“Brittany is unlike other of the regions we have been discussing. The latter have few mining facilities, whereas in Brittany they abound; and we would even go so far as to say the region is France’s, and possibly Europe’s richest mining zone.” These lines, spoken by Monnet, France’s Inspector of Mines in 1779, are surprising. Brittany has rarely been described as an industrial region and certainly not a mining one. However, in the 18th and 19th centuries it did hold mineral deposits, most notably lead glance, which at the time made it practically France’s biggest mining region. The largest mine was without doubt that of Poullaouen, adjacent to the villages of Locmaria-Berrien and Huelgoat in central Finistère.
The area had been mined since Ancient times, but was then more or less forgotten until the Compagnie des Mines de Basse-Bretagne was founded in 1732. After a slow start, the mining company began to scale up, starting in the second half of the 18th century, most notably thanks to the rediscovery of the neighbouring Huelgoat mines and technical modernisation. This rise was overseen by an on-site management team, often made up of Germans. Indeed, the Germans were considered industry experts because of the rich mining facilities in Harz, Saxe and Bohemia in their own country. Between 1760 and 1790, galena mining was at its climax throughout the combined mining facility known as Poullaouen-Huelgoat, with almost 20,000 tonnes of lead (used mainly for roofing and kitchens) and 50 tonnes of silver produced over 30 years.
To guarantee such production levels, the Company employed almost 1500 workers of all kinds just before the Revolution, making it the second biggest industrial zone in Brittany, after the dockyards in Brest, and the second biggest mining facility in France after Anzin (now the Nord-Pas-de-Calais). The engineers and supervisors often came from other locations in France or Germany, while qualified and unqualified workers (more than 90% of the employees) were farmers from Lower Brittany, for whom, despite the low salaries, the mine represented some extra income to go alongside their weak farming revenue. They were paid on average 13 livres tournois (the equivalent of roughly 1.5 kilos of bread) per day, whilst managers earned three times more and engineer-directors up to twenty times more. Shareholders – at the very top of the Parisian bourgeoisie and aristocracy – made a fortune: their shares increased in value by thirty in the second half of the 18th century.
Gruelling Working Conditions
The diversity of roles reflected the diversity of tasks required for the extraction and treatment of the ore itself. Miners worked down mineshafts that could be up to 300 metres deep. They used picks and chisels, but the most basic mining technique involved gunpowder, which was used from the very start of the mining process. Despite the risks of landslides or unplanned gunpowder explosions the main threat to workers was flooding, both slow and gradual or, in some cases, quick and deadly. To combat this risk complex hydraulic networks were put in place. Rivers at the surface were redirected (over more than 30km in Poullaouen) in order to put a series of water wheels in motion, which in turn triggered pistons at the lowest depths of the mines to activate pumps. This technical configuration was very costly to maintain and so it was decided it should be replaced. In Poullaouen, a steam-powered engine was successfully installed in 1747, but it was not cost-effective, and in Huelgoat a water column machine was installed from 1831.
The ore was transported to the surface using horsepower, before being sorted and washed by children and women respectively. The children would pass the rocks under powerful water jets to remove the mud, then sort them according to their apparent quality or ore category. The ore was then crushed at the stamp mill, or broken down with hammers weighing between six and nine kilos each, by women known as ‘stampers’. Finally, the huge quantities of ore fragments and slimes were cleaned by ‘washerwomen’ on huge tables over which water flowed, to separate the metal from other elements of no value. The ore was then washed and sent to the foundries in Poullaouen where different types of ovens manned by workers working in extreme temperatures burnt off the sulphur and remaining useless elements, melted the lead and separated it from the silver. The lead ingots obtained in this way were then sent by boat to the rolling mills in Normandy to make sheet metal, metallic trays and other kitchen utensils, whilst the silver was taken by guarded stagecoach to the Hôtels des Monnaies, or mint houses. This set of techniques remained more or less in place until the mines were closed and a report from the 18th century (probably paid for by the Company) declared that “The difficulties associated with extracting the ore, the diverse operations required, the careful and attentive processes necessary to transform this rock, in which metal is so rare, and these muddy stones into pure silver, into white lead [make] these slopes of stone, sand and useless slag one of the most remarkable monuments to the shrewdness, courage and perseverance of man.”
The Decline of an Industrial Treasure
Today these ‘monuments’ of sand and slag are all that’s left of the Huelgoat-Poullaouen mines. After a peak in production at the end of the 18th century, the foundry struggled to modernise and slowly began to lose its profit margin in the 19th century. Despite the installation of the impressive water-column machine at Huelgoat, the technical set-up based on hydraulics and wood was unable to adapt to the modern technologies of steam power and steel, the main reason being that there were no cost-effective coal resources nearby. Chronic underinvestment – shareholders preferred to invest in more profitable, new mining endeavours in the north and centre of France - the decrease in the price of lead and silver and finally a disagreement over the inheritance of the final majority shareholder all worked together to overpower the Huelgoat-Poullaouen mining facility.
As the country entered a new accelerated phase of industrialisation, this mining facility and historical gem in Lower Brittany, was dismantled in 1866. The mines were abandoned, the tunnels filled in and the buildings sold for construction material, which explains why today there is nothing left of the huge washing plant facilities, or the foundry's great industrial hangar, “The most beautiful example of metallurgy in France”, according to a report in 1806, or of the impressive Château des Mines, where the on-site directors once lived.
Certain mineshafts were reopened in the 1920s but on a much smaller scale and for just a few years only. Other galena mines in Brittany had already gained the upper hand, in Pont-Péan, Châtelaudren and Vieux-Vy-sur-Couesnon. Today the build-up of sand and waste rock as well as the old canals and mine shafts at Huelgoat-Poullaouen wouldn’t mean much without the promotion work carried out by the Association de sauvegarde de l’ancienne mine (Association for the preservation of old mines) which, via its centre, the Maison de la mine in Locmaria-Berrien, and guided tours in the summer, ensures that the memory of what was once one of the biggest mines in France remains alive.
Translation: Tilly O'Neill
