VIEILLE MONTAGNE – RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT – NEWS
- * Rampill Ore-Dressing Mill in Nenthead is due for demolition this year (2017). We hope that representative samples of its structure can be saved for posterity, particularly from the zinc roof.
- * The Gohltal Museum in Kelmis, Moresnet, Belgium, will be moving to a new home – the former Vieille Montagne offices.
- * Ideas are germinating for a one-day VM event in Nenthead in Cumbria, England, this year.
- * Funding is being sought for an archivist to catalogue the hundreds of shelf metres of Vieille Montagne files in the State Archives in Belgium.
- * The Vieille Montagne display is on view at the Italian ‘Barracks’ at Nenthead. (See Nenthead Mines Conservation Society website for opening times)
- * A hole in the ground has appeared outside the LVR Museum of the Rhineland, a former zinc works in Oberhausen, Germany, providing a good opportunity for some on-site industrial archaeology.
- * Documentary investigation is ongoing into the VM trials in Welsh mines around 1896-1900.
- * Many of the Italians and some of the Germans who worked at Nenthead in Cumbria from 1903-1915 have been identified from church and civil records, an excellent start for international family history research
The Vieille Montagne
Zinc Mining Company Of Belgium
This web site brings historians, genealogists and researchers from around Europe together into a co-operative project that will investigate the history of the Vieille Montagne and its workers. A ‘branch’ of VM researchers will be set up in whichever country there is an interest, each with its own web page, hence this one, Vieille Montagne History (GB), to start with.
In 1896 The Vieille Montagne brought the outside world to this distant part of Cumbria, or Cumberland as it then was, turning it into a focus of international attention, which is hard to believe nowadays when one looks at the village. The company brought huge financial investment, new revolutionary technology, and a foreign workforce from places that locals had only seen in a school atlas.
The four main nationalities who worked the mines were English, Belgians, Germans and Italians. As well as these, an English company clerk recalled that in the streets of Nenthead at one time there could be heard Dutch, French, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish being spoken, and in 1911 there was a solitary Hungarian – an electrician.
The opportunities across Europe for VM-related investigation, such as research into the economic and mining activities of the company, the social effects upon local communities in each country, and family history research into the multi-national workforce, are almost limitless. And, not to be forgotten, is the place of origin of the Vieille Montagne, the small, formerly neutral territory of Moresnet which is now part of Belgium.
Willingness and enthusiasm for the project is evident and has been expressed among the mining fraternity in Britain, Belgium, Germany and Italy, but this is only a small part of what could even be a world-wide project, the Vieille Montagne had branches and associated companies in Algeria, France, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia and the United States.
The opportunities across Europe for VM-related investigation, such as research into the economic and mining activities of the company, the social effects upon local communities in each country, and family history research into the multi-national workforce, are almost limitless. And, not to be forgotten, is the place of origin of the Vieille Montagne, the small, formerly neutral territory of Moresnet which is now part of Belgium.
Willingness and enthusiasm for the project is evident and has been expressed among the mining fraternity in Britain, Belgium, Germany and Italy, but this is only a small part of what could even be a world-wide project, the Vieille Montagne had branches and associated companies in Algeria, France, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia and the United States.
The Foreigners in the Hills
If you are interested in reading more about the story of the Vieille Montagne in Nenthead, Cumbria, read ‘The Foreigners in the Hills’ by Alastair F. Robertson, available on line or from the author at Ashleigh House, Nenthead Road, ALSTON, Cumbria, CA9 3SN, for £11.50 to include p&p.
This site is continually updated, please reload your page every visit
Vieille Montagne History