Puits des Malécots Chaudefonds-sur-Layon · Pays de la Loire · France

The Malécots site lies on the route de la Corniche Angevine (RD751), between the hamlets of Ardenay and La Haie-Longue on the commune of Chaudefonds-sur-Layon. The sillon houiller of Basse-Loire, running from Montrelais in Loire-Atlantique to Saint-Georges-sur-Layon, comprises some eleven concessions of Namurian-age coal. The earliest reference to coal extraction in the Ardenay locality dates from 1494, in the accounts of Jehan Jollivet, châtelain receiver of the barony of Rochefort, which record the existence of two puits at Ardenay.

By 1500 two pits had been dug. By 1750 exploitation had become more organised, with 37 pits employing 123 miners spread across the parishes of Chaudefonds and neighbouring communes. The Concession de Layon-et-Loire was subsequently created; the concession of Chaudefonds-sur-Layon was formally accorded on 23 November 1835 with an area of 2.68 square kilometres.

The concession underwent a series of mergers and boundary adjustments, merging on 4 January 1811 with neighbouring concessions to form the concession de Saint-Lambert et Saint-Aubin. The Grand Puits des Malécots — the first major shaft at the Malécots site, designated puits N°1 — was sunk in 1822 and reached a depth of approximately 300 metres. It served as the most productive shaft in the concession.

Between 1811 and 1892 the concession produced 878,573 tonnes of coal in total. On 16 December 1867 an asphyxiation accident occurred in the shaft; in 1869 a violent firedamp incident ravaged the deepest levels. Of fifteen miners present at the time, ten were rescued alive and five perished, two of whom were never recovered.

A funeral ceremony was held at the shaft head in the presence of some 3,000 people. The mine was found to be burning between the 290 and 300 metre levels, a fire discovered in February 1868, where coal and timber had smouldered in a caved area. Following financial difficulties, the exploitation was closed in 1873, shortly after a serious fire that also cost five miners their lives and left two bodies unrecovered.

The site was then largely abandoned. Between 1915 and 1923 the Société des Recherches Minières de Rochefort-sur-Loire sank four shallow exploratory puits — N°1, N°2, N°3, and N°4. The fourth of these, pushed to 60 metres, proved most productive, yielding some 15,000 tonnes of coal, but without a commercial outlet after the recovery of the northern coalfields following the First World War, the site ceased activity in 1923.

In 1942, under the German occupation, the Société des Mines d'Or de la Bellière exploited the former puits N°4 for the account of the Établissements Bessonneau d'Angers, a maker of rope and cordage. Under the Bessonneau enterprise the puits was progressively deepened from 60 to 85 metres; thereafter a plan incliné extended the workings to a depth of 200 metres. This shaft became known as the puits des Malécots N°2.

A 13-metre wooden headframe was erected over the shaft. The surface infrastructure was organised as a proper colliery: offices, a forge, a lamp room, changing rooms, showers. An exploitation permit of 15 years was applied for in 1949 and granted.

At its maximum in the 1950s, the mine employed 45 workers, approximately 30 of them underground, and produced up to 5,560 tonnes of coal per year, destined entirely for the Bessonneau factory at Angers. In 1954 a second shaft of 45 metres depth was sunk a short distance from the first to serve as a ventilation shaft, completing the ventilation circuit underground. The mine's coal was despatched daily by lorry to the Angers factory.

The permit of exploitation expired at the end of 1964. With cheap fuel oil now available and competition from imported coal, Bessonneau decided not to renew the permit and the mine closed in 1964, followed subsequently by the closure of the Bessonneau factory itself. At closure, the 85-metre puits N°2 was backfilled with demolition rubble from the surface installations, and its head was sealed with a concrete cap.

The 45-metre ventilation shaft was also backfilled. In September 2022 a depression of 0.5 metres appeared at the head of the puits N°2, reported to the DREAL des Pays-de-la-Loire. Investigation by GEODERIS revealed that the original sealing cap rested directly on the backfill and had no support in the competent surrounding ground, making it vulnerable to subsidence of the backfill.

Remediation works were carried out by the Département de Prévention et de Sécurité Minière (DPSM) of BRGM. A new reinforced concrete slab was cast resting on the competent ground around the shaft perimeter, and the ventilation shaft received a conical concrete backfill. The Malécots N°2 site was restored and opened to the public from 2008, under the management of the Communauté de communes Loire-Layon (Maine-et-Loire) with the support of the Association Sainte-Barbe des Mines et Corniche Angevine.

In 2009 a wooden headframe was constructed by the Ateliers Perrault, charpentiers spécialisés dans les monuments historiques, as a close reproduction of the original headframe, with a visitor platform at 6.20 metres accessible by a helical metal stair. The original shaft emplacement was indicated by coloured gravel and by a short section of mine boisage under the stair. The former comptable's building was reconstructed as a shelter and information point with interpretive panels.

The transformer building, original to the mine, was cleaned and preserved, and the terril (spoil heap) was retained intact. The Malécots N°1 site, across the RD751, contains the original nineteenth-century shaft — now some 50 metres deep due to partial collapse — in dense vegetation; access to this area is prohibited as the terrain is unstable.