Carreau de Sainte-Fontaine, chevalement à Saint-Avold (Moselle)
The Carreau de Sainte-Fontaine is a former mining site in Saint-Avold featuring a distinctive steel headframe built in 1954. The structure has an uncommon design with two pairs of pulley mechanisms positioned on each side of a central independent frame, engineered to serve a double-compartment shaft system.
The shaft began coal extraction in 1908 under the name Puits Waldemar-Müller and operated until 1972. After reopening briefly between 1976 and 1979, the site closed permanently in 1986, with the headframe having been rebuilt in 1954 as a modernized structure.
The site is named after a local spring and reflects the importance of natural resources to the mining community. For decades, the mine shaped daily life and social bonds among workers and their families in Saint-Avold.
The site is open and easy to locate, with paths around the headframe that provide good views of the structure from different angles. The location is quiet and offers ample space to appreciate the scale of the installation and read any historical signage present.
The headframe is one of only three known examples of its specific design type across the entire Nord-Pas-de-Calais region and Lorraine basin. This rarity makes it a valuable record of mining engineering history and regional industrial development.
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