Hi Mummy,
we made a fantastic trip today. Katja met her friend Erika at 10:00 a.m. The two ladies had something really special in their minds.
Today it is the "Tag des offenen Denkmals". In english it is called European Heritage Days.
European Heritage Days is a joint action of the Council of Europe and the European Commission involving all 49 signatory states of the European Cultural Convention under the motto, Europe: a common heritage. The annual programme offers opportunities to visit buildings, monuments and sites, many of which are not normally accessible to the public. It aims to widen access and foster care for architectural and environmental heritage. This years’s motto is "Archaelogy and building research".
We decided to visit an ancient mine today. In this region ore mining started in 16th century.
There were three different periods of mining: The first one was before Thirty-Years War (1618 - 1648), the second one from 1758 – 1765 and the third one in 1853. Traces of the second period are difficult to find today.
Mining stopped after the first two periods because there was no possibility for smelting in this region. Actually they had watercraft, but the owners of the lot where smelting would have been possible had no interest in building a smelting works. They even were disappropriated. During this time the slag heaps had become so large that it was impossible to smelt the iron core.
Then in 1853 there was a last effort to revive the mines. In World War I parts of the large slag heaps were assimilated.
In a wooded area a local construction engineer excavated a gallery on his own ground. He found the mouth and built a new pit. Today we were able to see the pit. Before photos of the building site were shown. The engineer startet his work in 2002 and in about two or three years the mine should be ready for visitors.
Now I will show you some photos.
Here we are on our way to the forrest where the mine is located. We are standing on a railway bridge here.
This time we walked underneath the railway track, close to our destination.
Suneshine in the forrest ...
A view from above to the pit ...
This is the emblem of the association that arranged this meeting.
This is the entrance to the pit, hanging above is the closing.
The pit goes down 6 metres and meets the gallery then. It is revetted with concrete.
Here you can see the mouth, unfortunately one of the outside walls crashed so it was not possible to go inside.
We walked then through the forrest to Schloss Burg, an medieval castle in the neighbour town Solingen.
