mines of Saint-Éloy-les-Mines

The mines of Saint-Éloy-les-Mines are coal and silver-lead mines located in the town of Saint-Éloy-les-Mines, France and environs. They were constructed in the 18th century during the beginning of industrialization in Combraille, which included: the glass industry at Montel-de-Gelat; the coal mines of Vernade (Saint-Éloy) and The Peize (Gutters) the silver-lead of mines Roignon (Youx) and Mas Boutin (Saint Eloy). Eighteenth-century France saw the beginnings of industrialization across the entire kingdom. It was also a time when landowners, especially noblemen, were trying to apply physiocratic ideas to change their way of cultivating the soil and making crop rotations by introducing, for example, the cultivation of potatoes and artificial grasslands. Other nobles and wealthy citizens were also trying, sometimes unsuccessfully, to develop new industries, such as farm ores. Some entrepreneurs foresaw the changes that were going to evolve in the 19th century and worked to take advantage of the country's abundance of natural resources.

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