Alfred Pit

Alfred Pit
	General information about the mine
Mining technology	Underground mining
	Information about the mining company
Employees	Max. 260 miners
Start of operation	1861
End of operation	1914
	Funded raw materials
Degradation of	Brown coal
Greatest depth	57 m
	Geographical location
Coordinates	51 ° 56 '39.5 " N , 11 ° 48' 20.2" E Coordinates: 51 ° 56 '39.5 " N , 11 ° 48' 20.2" E
	Location of the Alfred mine
Location	Tornitz
local community	Barby
District ( NUTS3 )	Salzlandkreis
country	State of Saxony-Anhalt
Country	Germany
District	Central German lignite district (periphery)

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Alfred Pit

The pit Alfred is a former 1915 disused brown coal - mine near Tornitz between Calbe and Barby in today Salzlandkreis (formerly County Schoenebeck ). The coal was extracted underground .

Only a few houses and allotment gardens that were left of the adjoining miners' settlement after the mine was closed in 1914 are reminiscent of the location of the Alfred mine .

history

Construction and operation

In the middle of the 19th century, several lignite mines were built around Calbe, which served to supply the sugar factory, the cloth mills and other industries in Calbe.

The Alfred mine was founded in 1861 by the Douglas family of mining entrepreneurs from Aschersleben near the Pichör settlement . Under the leadership of the later Count of Douglas , Hugo Sholto Oskar Georg von Douglas , the mine became one of the most important brown coal civil engineering mines in Germany.

To the seam , which at this point a thickness unlock of up to 24.3 has m, an was chute to about 45 m drilled (1882 at 57 m depth). The miners drove seven trips (ladders) into the pit. From the shaft, a network of tracks (tunnels) was driven into the subsoil that extended over several kilometers. The miners loosened the coal in the most difficult manual labor with picks and hoes . The coal was brought to the main line by the miners with Hunten , where it was hooked into a machine-driven chain conveyor that pulled the Hunte to the shaft. In the headframe , two 5 hl wagons were brought to the surface and emptied there. At peak times (around 1890) promoted more than 200 miners in three layers almost 700 tonnes of raw lignite per day.

The fans for ventilation and the pumps for draining the mine were powered by steam engines. The four steam boilers required for this were fired with brown coal from our own production.

The coal was transported from the mine by funicular to the mine’s own briquette factory on the Kuhberg in the north of Calbe. From here the raw coal and the pellets produced were driven out by carts and trains.

The Berlin-Blankenheimer Railway , part of the " Kanonenbahn " line Berlin-Nordhausen-Wetzlar-Metz , crosses directly at the pit . and the Magdeburg – Leipzig line opened in 1839 by the Magdeburg-Leipzig Railway Company .

Decommissioning and subsequent use

At the beginning of the 20th century the mine fell into a crisis. The dewatering was becoming more and more difficult; there were more and more frequent and massive water ingresses . Sales of coal also fell. The mine’s briquette factory stopped production in 1904. Between 1910 and 1912 there were also strikes by miners, which reduced the profitability of the mine. In 1912 the Earl of Douglas died and his heirs were not interested in rehabilitating the mine. The operation was finally closed in 1915, the 260 miners were laid off.

On the premises of the Alfred briquette factory , after its closure, an animal carcass processing factory (Calbe chemical factory) was built , which produced glue, gelatine, animal meal , animal feed and fertilizer. This later became the VEB Gelatinewerk Calbe .

After the demolition of the old buildings and the formation of the subsidence lakes (see below), a "Seehof" stud was established on the site of the mine .

Residual lakes

After the underground shafts and tunnels were flooded , they gradually collapsed. The resulting day breaks on the surface were filled with water and a group of lakes, shaft ponds or Seehofteiche (named after the horse farm mentioned above) was formed.

Green pond (actually two ponds, separated by a narrow land bridge, together 25 ha)51.943895 11.797514
Alder pond (5 ha)51.945482 11.803479
Poplar pond (2.4 ha)51.945852 11.800518
Official pond (0.7 ha)51.944 11.803608

Today the ponds form an idyllic natural space that is home to a rich fauna and flora. Fishing is permitted with an appropriate license, the fish stocks include carp, tench, gusters, pike, eels and various species of white fish.