Former Lorraine iron-ore mine whose unfloodable hillside galleries remain accessible, managed by the Association d'Histoire Industrielle with working period machinery.
The Mines de fer d'Hussigny at Hussigny-Godbrange, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department at the northern tip of France bordering Luxembourg, worked the minette lorraine iron ore from 1874 until the final cessation of all mining activity at the end of 1978. The concession at Hussigny was obtained in 1874 by the Labbé family of the Forges de Gorcy, and the Godbrange concession was granted in the same year to a group of Lorraine ironmasters. Extraction began first at the surface and in shallow workings, with underground gallery mining developing from the late 1870s.
The concession covered some 2,000 hectares and included the sièges of Hussigny, Godbrange, and Tiercelet, which were merged into the groupement G.T.H. from 1955. Peak annual output reached 1,470,000 tonnes in 1973. The Hussigny underground mine stopped working at depth in 1954; open-cast extraction followed until 1967; and residual underground operations continued until the end of 1978.
Because the galleries were driven into a hillside above the valley floor, the workings have never flooded since the end of pumping, a circumstance that has made physical preservation of the site unusually complete. The Association d'Histoire Industrielle (AHI) manages regular guided visits to the intact galleries, which include working demonstrations of original drilling, loading, and transport equipment.
Iron ore was extracted from the forests and hillsides around Hussigny-Godbrange long before the industrial era, with ore from the forêt de Selomont being washed and carted to forges as far as the Meuse valley. This early extraction of surface and near-surface fort ore gave way, around the middle of the nineteenth century, to the exploitation of the oolitic minette deposits — shallower in profile but far more extensive — in the valley of the Côte Rouge. The railway line between Longwy and Villerupt opened in 1878, transforming the economics of the ore field by enabling bulk mineral transport to the blast furnaces of the region.
The concession of Hussigny was obtained in 1874 by the Labbé family of the Forges de Gorcy, who began gallery extraction shortly afterwards. The products of this early mine — known as la vieille mine des anciens — were carried to the Gorcy ironworks by horse-drawn wagons. In the same year, 1878, the large Godbrange concession was granted to a group of principally Lorraine ironmasters including d'Huart, de Saintignon, and Raty. Among the other concession-holders and investors in the Hussigny district at this period were Belgians — including Cockerill and La Providence — Luxembourgers, Sarrois, and French companies from the north including the Hauts-Fourneaux de Maubeuge and Denain-Anzin. The concession area also encompassed a blast-furnace works at Hussigny itself, run by the Société Lorraine Industrielle from 1882.
The Godbrange concession rapidly became one of the most modern and best-equipped mines in the Lorraine iron-ore field. Electrification of the main haulage galleries was introduced as early as 1896, with LEBRUN electric locomotives replacing horse haulage. Compressed-air drilling was introduced before 1914. Reinforced-concrete accumulator tanks were constructed from 1925. The Hussigny mine itself, by contrast, retained older working methods without mechanical loading for longer.
Exploitation of the surface workings at the Côte Rouge continued into the 1930s, until that open-cast working was liquidated in 1935. In 1939 to 1940 the galleries at Hussigny came to wider historical notice as a location for the beginning of an underground V1 rocket assembly installation, though the specific extent of that wartime use remains uncertain in the available sources.
After the Second World War the mine at Hussigny which had continued as a traditional manually-loaded underground working ceased extracting from its underground chantiers in 1954. The remaining reserves of the concession were then worked by a large mechanised open-cast operation using face shovels and dumpers from 1957 to 1967. From 1955 the three sièges of Tiercelet, Godbrange and Hussigny had been united under a single directorate as the groupement G.T.H. (Godbrange-Tiercelet-Hussigny). Tiercelet and Godbrange were consistently at the forefront of mechanisation in loading and haulage: pneumatic loaders, scraper conveyors, Joy loaders, shuttle cars, rubber-tyred loaders and 25-tonne trucks were all deployed in this period. In 1953 a major reconstruction of the main gallery infrastructure was carried out in the Hussigny working: the central haulage artery was enlarged to 8 metres wide and 7 metres high and extended to 4 kilometres, with electric trains capable of 40 kilometres per hour hauling 110-tonne loads and running at intervals of every ten minutes, at a rate of some 200 trains per day. The workings covered some 2,000 hectares of the former concession.
Ownership of the concession changed with the successive restructurings of French steel and mining: from the Société Mosellane de Sidérurgie to Wendel-Sidelor, and then to Sacilor and its mining subsidiary Lormines. At peak production in 1973 the Hussigny-Godbrange sièges extracted 1,470,000 tonnes of iron ore in a single year. All remaining mining activity at Hussigny-Godbrange ceased at 31 December 1978, marking the end of a century of iron-ore extraction at the site.
The critical geological circumstance that distinguishes this site from most others in the Lorraine basin is that the galleries were driven horizontally into the hillside rather than below the water table. When pumping of the exhaure ceased after closure, the workings did not flood. The galleries have therefore survived in a condition of exceptional completeness, with much of the original rail infrastructure and equipment remaining in situ.
The Association d'Histoire Industrielle (AHI) was established after closure to preserve the site and organise public access. Members of the association, some of them sons of former miners and including French and Luxembourger volunteers, undertook the recovery and restoration of original mine equipment. The collection includes a working diesel locomotive with ore wagons and a passenger car dating from 1929, as well as a drilling jumbo, tracked loaders, scaling machines, cable reels, and other machinery, all maintained in working order. The AHI organises guided visits that include live demonstrations of drilling, blasting, and haulage techniques as they were practised in the mine's final decades of operation. The site is described in tourism sources as unique in Europe for the degree to which original equipment remains functional within the intact galleries.