Charbonnages Paxo

Charbonnages H or ‘Paxo’ was built by a wealthy businessman in 1884 to mine coal. There are two coal caps on the site, extending 720m into the Earth.



Unfortunately it dried up in 1976, I’ve managed to find the original certificate for the site from 1884, for 6,500,000 Francs! (Apologies I’ve had to blank out the name, its to keep in with the Euro crowd )


Looking up stairs:


Looking down stairs: “Oh Hai!”


The main hall,


The miners would have hung their belongings in cages on chains, before hoisting the to the ceiling for safe keeping!
Looking up at chains:


The whole place was tiled so, so beautifully






Unusual curved corridor:


OMG, check out that bit of staircase! I’ve got to go sit on the edge of that!






Tiled showers, unfortunately all smashed:


Laundry:


Corridor:


Despite its state there were still a few nik-naks left behind:

Old miners boots:


Paperwork stretching back to 1954 (this from ‘69):


Thanks for looking:

Great photos & report,you on on hols now?

flyboys90 said:

Great photos & report,you on on hols now?

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Cheers!
Afraid not, I keep having to come back to the UK to work 60 hours a week to fund the Eurotrips! we try and hit as many sites as we can while we're over there tho!

Looks like the place needs some TLC, some great photos. Took a while to realise I was looking up a wall and not along the floor in one photo.

is it called "Paxo" because most of the building is stuffed now? ;-)

TeeJF said:

is it called "Paxo" because most of the building is stuffed now? ;-)

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You can see it on the lo res, but on the first shot there is a name / date stone right at the pinnacle of the gable: it reads "P.A.X" hence we gave it the nickname 'paxo' as we were walking round!