Le cheval, de la fosse au musée : l’exemple du Centre historique minier

The horse from the mine to the museum, the example of Lewarde historic mining centre. The Lewarde mining history centre is established on the site of the Delloye colliery which operated from 1931 to 1971. This pit still features its former infrastructures, such as its above-ground stable, where the public can discover the permanent exhibition entitled ‘Horses and Mining’. In the eighteenth century, the only source of energy available down the mines of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region was the muscular power, of men and horses. Above ground, draft horses drove winding gins, which could lower the men down and raise the extracted coal up. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when the size of the shafts made it possible, horses were sent underground to haul the mine wagons at the pit bottom. The arrival of new energy sources, steam, compressed air, then electricity, did not put an end to the work carried out by the horses underground and the last horse was brought to the surface only in 1976. More than a working animal, the horse was considered as a fully-fledged worker, but also as a real co-worker, very popular amongst the miners, with whom it shared the hard work