The old silver mine
The mysteries of the “Sleeping Mine”
In 1847, the refinery of Vialas supplied a quarter of the French silver production. With the help of the momentum of the rivers, it processed the galena, a lead ore containing silver. The valley echoed with the hammering of the “bocard”, a device designed to crush stones, and the village was buzzing with activity. The “Compagnie des Mines de Vialas” was a flourishing enterprise, famous for its technical achievements.
At the end of the 19th century, the mine was closed. The site returned to birds’ chirping and rivers’ babbling. A luxuriant vegetation overran the stone vaults, giving a romantic charm to this spectacular survivor of industrial architecture.
One hundred years later, a handful of natives – Le Filon des Anciens – decided to awaken this rich heritage. The site is now listed as a “Monument historique”. A discovery footpath has been set up to visit the site. A museum is in process, which will be installed in the centre of the village.
When the veins were discovered in 1781, miners unearthed a very old gallery, medieval or ancient, showing traces of exploitation using fire.
The mine was thus exploited, in the Middle-Ages or in ancient times. Yet, for more than a century, from 1781 to 1894, tons of rock were extracted from the mountain, destroying he ancient galleries in the process.
It is therefore impossible, today, to date this initial exploitation precisely. Only the name of one of the veins remains: le filon des Anciens
1- An industrial and social history
The Vialas site is characteristic of the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. At the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century, the European world is changing fast: large factories are built, goods are mass produced, new machines are invented, and science is used to constantly innovate and increase productivity.
Vialas, a small rural and Protestant village, is quickly transformed into a workers’ town. Working conditions are terrible for men, women and children but industry also brings the first schools, the first hospitals and the promise of a better future. The mine always needs hands: French, German, and Italian laborers join the local population.
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From the end of the 18th century, Europe experienced a succession of of economic and social upheavals that profoundly transformed lifestyles, the work place, political regimes, the perception of the world…This movement, based on the notion of technical progress and the rise of economic capitalism, marks the 19th century and was called “Industrial revolution” by historian Blanqui.
First occurring in Great-Britain, these major changes spread to the rest of Europe before reaching the United States of America.
Several facts then correlate; an increase in population on the one hand and the invention of of new machines and methods that facilitate and make work profitable on the other.
The rural exodus drains the countryside, cities are suddenly overcrowded. Industry becomes the new sector of employment, radically transforming social geography and lifestyles. The textile industry first experiences a huge growth, thanks to mechanization of weaving looms, before metallurgy experiences the same growth. The steam engine gradually replaces hydraulic force and states embark on the race for minerals and metals, necessary to feed and build these new machines.
Skilled craftsmen are replaced by a new category of workers, unskilled workers who can only offer their labor. This period gives birth to the proletariat and leads to a social revolution: in this context, Marx develops his theory on the class struggle and lays the foundations for questioning social conditions.
Vialas was part of this industrial adventure. As from 1776, the perimeter of the mining concession established for the Compagnie des Mines Royales de Villefort included Vialas territory, although the first veins were not discovered until 1781. At the end of Ancient Régime, Vialas is predominantly a rural village: terraces allow the cultivation of rye and buckwheat as well as the exploitation of chestnuts; moors provide pasture for the sheep. Some families supplement their income with silkworms, as shown by the mulberry trees planted in some properties, last testimony to this period.
When the Compagnie decided to exploit the galena veins, and, as from 1827, to set up a factory in the vicinity of the galleries, the repercussions on the village were considerable: increase in population and construction of new neighbourhoods.
The appearance of the village changed. The company is accountable to shareholders, most of whom live in Paris. The various changes in the statutes and in the name of the company also testify to the rise of capitalism: the company, starting as “royale”, falls into the hands of private shareholders, before ending under the corporate governance of a firm based in French Algeria, Mokta el Hadid.
Industrial activity in Vialas benefits from both local and foreign expertise by recruiting engineers from Germany where the industrial revolution started earlier than in France. Consequently, students from engineering schools came in large numbers to study new processes implemented in Vialas (Cf. René LALAUZE. 2018. La mine de Vialas, un siècle d’archives inédites. Vialas: Le Filon des Anciens. 102p.)
Consequently, the Compagnie des Mines de Vialas , testifies to the birth of an economic globalization.
It is also worth noting that the industrial activity in Vialas, in the course of the 113 years of exploitation, was insensitive to political upheavals that marked the history of the 19th century.
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the French were no longer divided between the three orders of clergy, nobility and third estate. With the advent of industry a new organization was established, laying the foundations of capitalism: on the one hand those who own the capital and on the other those who can only offer their labor power. Emergence of a working class is a typical feature of this period.
Industrial development in Vialas puts forward the emergence of this social category and the transformation of a rural and agrarian society into an industrial and more urban society. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the mining adventure, workforce was mainly local and rural. Working for the Compagnie was a way of increasing one’s income. Gradually, these peasant miners choose to work fulltime in the mine and the factory, prefering the promise of a regular income to the uncertainty of annual harvests. Faced with labor shortages, managers of the mine recruited abroad: in Germany for the know-how of their engineers, in Italy for the unskilled workforce. The arrival of this latter category contributes to proletarianization of the factory’s staff, since it has no other resource at its disposal than those provided by the company. New services linked to this working population developed in the village and in the company: bakeries, groceries, rented accommodation in the new Esparnettes district, church, …)
Managers of the factory have the same concerns than those of other large companies of the period. The boss must act as a good father should, and paternalistic measures are set up. Among those: subsistence stores are created inside the company, so that these foreigners can shop inside the firm rather than in the village where they encounter difficulties with the local inhabitants. A token currency was even implemented within the company, contributing towards trapping the employees in a proletarian spiral: he cannot spend his wages outside the firm that employs him.
In the same paternalistic spirit, the firm offered free education to its employees, even before Jules Ferry’s laws were adopted. Thanks to relief and saving funds, workmen might be helped in the event of an accident or loss of job.
The society as a whole is transformed within the period of a couple of generations. Children’s future is no longer necessarily the same as their parents’; schools develop and Lozère’s Premier Cours Complémentaire opens in Vialas in 1889. People take an interest in the development of technology and sciences, as does the Director ‘Maisonneuve,’ a scholarly engineer passionate about geology and optics.
Working in the mine is hard. One knows the hardness of working “at the bottom”, but working on grading, sifting and sorting at the exit of the galleries (mostly done by women and children at the beginning of the exploitation), and in the preparation workshops, was also exhausting. In the factory, noise of the machines is deafening, working pace is intense. Smelters, especially those in charge of roasting (grillage) in the reverberatory furnaces (fours à réverbères), must regularly intervene to blend the ore heated up to 700° and are exposed to toxic fumes, including sulphur dioxide and lead vapours. Downstream from the factory, the river Luech is polluted and fishermen complain in Chamborigaud…
The evolution of the population in Vialas is directly correlated with the company’s activity. That is the reason why, in 1894, when the company closed, a great number of workers left the village, moved to other mining areas, and the village returned gradually to its rural character. The status of the miner of Vialas is therefore part of the movement of the 19th century and embodies the transition between a rural society and a proletarized, modern and industrial one.
2 - Sciences and technics
An industrial architecture... in stone
In the early stages, galena was transported to Villefort by donkeys. In 1872, the Compagnie decided to install a smelting works in Vialas. The place was not favourable: the slopes were steep, the valley was deep, the river was fickle.
Engineers had to invent technical solutions: crawling chimney running along the mountain, a 100 metres long vault, huge stone retaining walls, vast numbers of archways… Vialas’ refinery was a marvel of industrial architecture, its remains are a rare testimony of the early stages of industrial revolution.
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From an art history point of view, the 19th century is crossed by new artistic and architectural movements: neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, impressionism…
Building techniques also experienced major improvements thanks to the emergence of new materials such as iron and steel, or even prefabricated brick which allows fast and inexpensive construction.
The Vialas factory is very isolated and therefore cannot benefit from these new materials. It is mainly built of shale stone cut on site and it illustrates the centuries-old know-how of stone work in the Cévennes region.
Some elements are remarkable architectural feats emblematic of the site, earning it its registration as a Historic Monument in 2014. Indeed, a vault covers the stream for nearly 100 meters. And to evacuate toxic fumes, the factory architects installed a stone chimney along the side of the mountain. It is supported by a succession of arches which have earned the Bocard site the nickname “factory of a thousand vaults”. On the left bank of the stream (named “la Picadière”) there were also other examples -now unfortunately destroyed- of broken arches similar to the pointed arches of the traditional architecture of the Causses.
The large vault and the creeping chimney show the ingenuity of the architects of the time who knew how to adapt to this challenging site to set up a factory.
In 1860, the company was making significant profits and wanted to highlight its success when it improved and rebuilt parts of the foundry. For the new door and window frames, the architects chose sandstone, a more noble material than shale, which is not available in the area.
On the original blueprints that have survived, we can see that the factory adapted to technical developments. In order to quickly transform existing structures, the use of prefabricated brick, characteristic of the 19th century, became widespread. The architecture of the factory therefore constitutes an example of architecture between tradition and modernity.
The ruin-like appearance of the remains, which some even describe as Piranesian (characteristic of the architectural style of Piranesi, in being fancifully or gloomily neoclassical), is due to the deliberate destruction of part of the site, as well as its abandonment without any reconversion. The remains therefore reflect the factory as it was when it closed.
A cutting-edge factory... from the 19th century
In the 19th century, the Vialas site was a flagship of French industry. The Paris School of Mines sent engineering students there every year to study the processes. Their reports today provide valuable clues to understanding how silver was produced.
In the mountains, miners dug tens of kilometers of tunnels to access the galena veins. The techniques have evolved a lot: from the pickaxe(or pointerrolle), to black powder to compressed air. The work goes further and further into the mountain; the veins are exploited on 4 levels.
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In order to obtain silver, galena must undergo a set of operations and treatments. Throughout the 19th century, factory engineers improved processes to improve profitability.
The ore must first be sorted, washed and crushed, to obtain “schlichs”, a very rich galena powder, ready to melt. Powerful machines are used for this process, such as the “bocard”, a large water powered ore crusher that is extremely noisy.
Then, the ore must be melted: this is the metallurgical treatment. The schlichs are processed in three successive ovens. Chemistry today explains the process but at the time, knowledge was very empirical and the process seemed like magic to the workers!
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The archaeological excavation work carried out within the foundry by the CNRS team aims to better understand the processes developed, and highlights the permanence of traditional practices as well as numerous innovations.
Galena is a lead sulphide (PbS), a very stable cubic crystal. To obtain silver, you must first extract the sulfur, then the lead.
The first metallurgical operation took place in a reverberatory furnace, or air furnace, heated to around 600°C. It was an oxidation: the oxygen supplied by the oven traps the sulfur, which is evacuated in the form of sulfur dioxide smoke. Lead also oxidizes: we obtained lead oxides.
The second operation took place in a sleeve furnace, at very high temperature. It’s the opposite process: a reduction. Oxygen is trapped thanks to the addition of coke (CO), which will form CO2, and evacuated in the form of smoke. The lead metal, which contains silver, was then released and flowed to the bottom of the furnace.
The third kiln was a cupola furnace. It worked according to the same principle as the first: oxidation. The oxidized lead was removed by the worker who skimmed the top of the furnace: these oxides formed the litharges. The operation was delicate, because silver can also oxidize; the experienced worker spotted the “flash of silver” which signals the liquefaction of silver, and suddenly stopped the heating.
A “silver cake” was then formed, which was easily released thanks to the careful preparation of the sole (the lower portion of the refractory lining of the furnace). One still had to refine and pour the precious metal into graphite ingot molds to obtain silver ingots.
To run all these machines, energy was needed. Water from the rivers was used: hydraulic power. Water was collected 1 kilometer upstream and transported by a canal. The canal fed paddle wheels, which powered the machines. From 1860, a steam engine took over at the foundry when the river level was insufficient, but the preparation workshops still operated using hydraulic power.
Vialas provided ¼ of the national silver production in 1847 and its production continued to grow until 1861-62 when it reached 1930 kg of refined silver. The mining company then also derived significant income from its by-products: 146,000 kg of red litharges and 135,000 kg of yellow litharges (both used in the manufacturing of enamel, paints, inks, and crystal glass). Before 1845, it also produced white lead, or “silver white” (most used white pigment at the time). After the 1870s, exploitation gradually declined until closure in 1894.
3 - Geology
Galena is a lead sulphide, that is to say a molecule made up of sulfur atoms and lead atoms. Sometimes, lead atoms are replaced by silver atoms: in this case the galena is argentiferous.
Galena is found in rather vertical veins, often associated with quartz. These veins are ancient faults that have been filled with very hot water loaded with minerals. Under the effect of pressure and temperature, these minerals crystallized.
The particular geological situation of Vialas allowed the formation of an important galena vein network. Indeed, the town is at the contact zone between Mont Lozère’s granite and Cévennes valleys’ mica schists.
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Subsoil resources have been exploited in the Cévennes since ancient times, as evidenced by the work carried out on Mont Lozère by archaeologists Marie-Christine Bailly Maitre and Alain Ploquin. However, the 19th century constituted a turning point in history because of the significant needs for industry that led to an increased hunt for new veins of minerals. The scientific work carried out by Dolomieu or by De Gensanne on our territory at the end of Modern Times is a valuable example.
Although it is true that coal established itself as a prime raw material for industry, the Industrial Revolution cannot be reduced to coal mining only. Other minerals were sought after and exploited for their metal content or chemical properties. Among them galena, a silver-bearing lead ore, which is a lead sulphide. Silver does not exist here in its native state, but is present on the atomic scale. Galena is made up of sulfur atoms and lead atoms. Because of their atomic similitude, the silver atoms can sometimes replace the lead atoms. In order to obtain silver, it is therefore necessary to extract the sulfur, then the lead.
Galena is a mineral little known to the public even though it is the source of useful metals such as lead or silver and was also used to build the first radio sets. In Vialas this ore is mainly sought for silver, but the lead it contains is not neglected. A popular saying was that in 1870, Vialas produced “silver to pay the debt to Prussia, and lead for revenge”! Obtaining these metals require special treatments which generate waste products. These lead-based products were also recovered, like yellow or red litharge, or white lead, and used as adjuvants for paints.
The existence of galena veins in Vialas has its origins in several major geological events. The establishment of the Hercynian chain, nearly 300 million years ago, led to the formation of metamorphic rocks (Cévennes mica schists). Then, granite magma is formed in these mica schists. It is at this time that the granites of Mont Lozère are formed. It was probably at this time that the first mineralization began: thermal waters infiltrated into the fractures of the neighboring mica schists and created the veins. This mineral activity will keep going on and off and be restarted in particular about 60 million years ago when the Alps and the Pyrenees were formed. In Vialas, it will create silver galena, sphalerite (zinc ore), pyrite and mispickel (arsenopyrite).
4 - The site today
On the right bank of the Luech, close to the bridge of La Planche, in the village of Vialas, the old silver mine is now overrun by vegetation. The writer Jean-Pierre Chabrol named it “La Mine au bois dormant “.
From the road, one can observe, among pines and acacias, archways, remains of frontages as well as a bridge. One must get closer to discover the scale of the site, its vault covering about 100 metres of the Colombert, the strange ore-slides, the multitude of vaults of the smelting works building, made either of granite, schist, or bricks , the frontage of the ancient street and, dominating the Luech, one of the smelting works; foundations of the bakery, of the forge, of the ore treatment’s workplaces, the locations of paddle wheels, and, everywhere, there are canals, tunnels and traces of ancient waterfalls fuelling the refinery’s machines.
Bocard’s site exudes the very particular atmosphere of a city overrun by vegetation, allowing the visitor to discover, step by step, its marvellous stone architecture and the transient history of what once was an impressive human activity for the region.
Un site archéologique et des recherches historiques
L’histoire du site du Bocard est aujourd’hui un sujet d’études passionnant.
L’absence de reconversion du site après sa fermeture en 1894 en fait un précieux et rare vestige des premières usines de la Révolution Industrielle. L’ancienne fonderie est fouillée par une équipe du CNRS, laboratoire IRAMAT, sous la responsabilité de Jean-Charles Meaudre.
La particularité géologique du site et les évènements géologiques ayant conduit à la formation de la galène sont étudiés par le labo Géosciences de Montpellier, sous la direction d’Alain Chauvet.
L’impact sociologique et environnemental de l’activité industrielle précoce dans une zone de montagne fait l’objet d’études historiques.
Les procédés mécaniques et métallurgiques et leur impact environnemental intéressent l’Ecole des Mines d’Alès.
Le site du Bocard et les artistes
Le site du Bocard peut aujourd’hui être qualifié de ruine romantique. Une atmosphère très particulière, poétique et nostalgique, émouvante, se dégage des vestiges. Cette esthétique interpelle, elle est d’ailleurs sans doute la raison principale de l’attachement du public pour ce site. Plusieurs artistes ont sublimé le site de leurs talents dans différents domaines artistiques.
Le plus connu est certainement Jean-Pierre Chabrol, auteur et conteur né à Chamborigaud mais connu pour sa brillante carrière parisienne. Il débute le premier chapitre de sa trilogie Les Rebelles avec une présentation de “la mine au bois dormant” qu’il dépeint comme “ cachée dans un trou de verdure, au pied du Mont Lozère” et ” rudement joli”. Mais le site inspira aussi d’autres auteurs moins connus comme Albin Bazalgette qui rédigea en 1987 une nouvelle intitulée “ Le silence de la mine” pour le journal local du Trenze au Luech.
Au-delà de la littérature, le caractère esthétique des lieux a attiré les photographes dès la fin du XIXe siècle, comme en témoignent les cartes postales, cyanotypes et autres photographies. Le peintre local Jacques Plan y a également trouvé l’inspiration et réalisé de nombreuses représentations de l’usine dans son état actuel ou reconstitué. Le 7e art a aussi mis en avant l’histoire singulière de cette industrie à travers le regard du réalisateur Philippe Donadille et son film documentaire La mine au bois d’argent.
Plusieurs architectes ont également réalisé des projets d’architectures inspirés par le site du Bocard, à l’instar d’Agnès Joly, Josée Beeching et Frédéric Fiore.
Enfin l’ancienne usine constitue un décor propice aux spectacles vivants. A plusieurs reprises l’association Le filon des Anciens a proposé des lectures contées, des visites théâtralisées ainsi qu’une superbe mise en lumière à l’occasion de la Fête de la mine en 2018.
