The landscape is interwoven with a very large number of tangible signs which reveal a considerable human past. The material heritage of the Nord-Pas de Calais Coalfield - landscape, architecture, techniques - is steeped in a range of values, practices and attitudes which have survived within the people and which remain their own, despite the passage of generations and professional renewal.

Union House, Lens

Through a close combination of these material elements with mining culture and memories which are alive and well (the value of work, social struggles, trade unionism, employers’ policies, traditions, customs, collective practices, immigration, etc), the Coalfield provides an exceptionally complete record of the history of Industrialisation.

Behind this landscape which is today peaceful lies the history of a prolonged conflict between technology and the environment. The violence of the impact of the mining industry on the natural environment (bringing about the transformation of the structure and shape of the landscape through deforestation, surface collapses, slag heaps, and so on) and the scars left behind by this activity reveal the confrontation between a region's natural environment and the imperatives for economic development in that region.
In the case of the coalfield the landscape is not the result of a long and slow interaction between natural “surface” elements and human activity. It is not the contours of the land or its water courses which have shaped the region but rather the presence of coal: surface processes have been circumvented by underground development and exploitation.

Today, the Coalfield is above all a living system. A product of time and space, it continues to evolve and represents above all a living environment which should not be placed in stasis. Rather, the intention is to sustainably preserve the identity of a region which was built on a form of industrial activity and to see, through the prism of heritage values, these historic legacies as a set of new constructive resources.

The magnificent former offices of the Lens Mining Company, now part of Université d’Artois (Department of Sciences)