Puits Hottinguer

The Hottinguer coal mine was one of the main collieries of the Épinac coal mine. The buildings, raised between 1872 and 1876, housed a revolutionary atmospheric extraction system: a piston moving in a 558 m-high tube, machined in Le Creusot (an original technique by engineer Zulma Blanchet), rather than by traditional cables, which at the time were unable to descend to such depths (over 600 m), making it the deepest mine shaft in France when it was commissioned in 1871. After its closure in 1936, it was converted into a paint factory in 1948 by the BITULAC company, before being abandoned in 1998, barely ten years after the fire of March 12, 1989. It was listed as a historic monument by decree on November 26, 1992, and was classified by decree on October 11, 2022, which superseded the original listing. The Malakoff Tower and its wings have been undergoing renovation since late 2012. The construction of a photovoltaic power plant near the old buildings is currently under study.

Mine data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).