VIEILLE MONTAGNE – RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT – NEWS
- | ………. The Vieille Montagne Heritage Association held its first AGM in June in Liege, which was followed by a visit to the MMIL (Maison de la Metallurgie et de l’Industrie de Liege).……..
- | ………. Many thousands of Vieille Montagne documents are in the process of being catalogued by the AVAE (Association pour la Valorisation des Archives d’Enterprises). It has been estimated that the work will take about four years, although a lot can be completed within the first year. Funding for this has been generously given by the international UMICORE company based in Brussels……..
- | ………. A set of fascinating mid-nineteenth century watercolour paintings illustrating the zinc industry around Kelmis is to be restored and properly recorded.
- | ………. Since the opening of the MVM (Museum de la Vieille Montagne) in Kelmis, Belgium, in May 2018, the number of visitors has exceeded all expectations.
- | ………. A member of the VMHA has taken upon himself the heroic task of cataloguing and digitally improving around 2,400 photographs of the VM, most of which were taken in the early 20th century.
- | ………. Plans are under way to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of J.J.D. Dony, an abbot who was also a chemist! Dony was the founding father of the zinc industry in the Kelmis/Moresnet area of Belgium who obtained a lease from Napoleon in 1806 to work the zinc mine.
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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.
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.
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Vieille Montagne History