Le Locle cave mills
The cave mills of Le Locle in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland are located two kilometers west of the center of Le Locle, right on the border with France. They were the only underground mills in Europe. At the end of the 19th century they were shut down and a century later they were partially reopened as an industrial museum
Here at the Col des Roches , the Bied valley is blocked by a ridge. The Bied originally flowed into a rugged cave on the mountain slope and disappeared into its depth. The gradient inside the cave was used in water mills . Today the Bied is led in a canal through the mountain and used on the other side in a small hydroelectric power station. The water required for the demonstration operation of the mills is pumped back up.
history
The cave was opened for the operation of horizontal mills in the 16th century (first documented mention in 1549). In the multi-storey limestone cave , a system of water wheels arranged one above the other was installed to drive mills , threshing machines and a sawmill .
After the advent of electricity, the facility was converted into a slaughterhouse around 1890. The cave was used as a waste pit because the water from the Bied was diverted in a canal through the mountain to a newly built hydroelectric power station. In 1973, passionate history and cave researchers (the Millers' Brotherhood Confrérie des Meuniers du Col-des-Roches ) began to restore the facility, with the removal of the slaughterhouse waste in the cave being the greatest effort. Since July 1st, 1987, the cave has been open to the public with some of the old machines that have been working again.
museum
In 1992 the Col-des-Roches Underground Mill Foundation was set up to show the historical dimension of the site in an exhibition. The museum located above the underground mills can be visited before and after the cave visit.
It illustrates the various activities (milling, sawing, power generation) that were carried out here, as well as the history of the place, the importance of water and the effects of the nearby French border. Since 2001 there has been a permanent exhibition under the topic From Grain to Bread , which provides information about the additional areas of grain cultivation, milling and bakery.
literature
- P. Brandt: Les moulins du Col-des-Roches, a site unique in Europe .
- Pays neuchâtelois: vie économique et culturelle 8 , 1992-1993, pp. 13-17.
- Caroline Calame, Orlando Orlandini: The underground mills of Col-des-Roches - a journey into the interior of the earth , Foundation of the underground mills of Col-des-Roches, 2001.
Web links
- www.lesmoulins.ch (French)
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 47 ° 2 '56.9 " N , 6 ° 43' 17" E ; CH1903: 545500 / two hundred and eleven thousand one hundred and fifty