More winter colour

A few cold nights haven't deterred some plants from flowering, although blooms are much less now than before. The lower temperatures have had another effect. Many leaves have tinged red as a way of preventing frost damage, adding another dimension to the winter garden.

Heuchera holds on to its leaves in mild winters. These lovely red tinged leaves with silver markings (on the left) belong to the cultivar Silver Scrolls. Helleborus orientalis normally flowers in early spring but is still going strong in my sheltered urban garden. The leaves of Bergenia (right) take on shades of red, purple and maroon after a few cold nights.

Collieries of the Ruhrrevier

Mining in the Ruhr Area started in the middle ages but really took off from 1700 when the use of explosives made it possible to create deeper pits accessing deeper coal seams. These earliest collieries were often small in scale with only a few dozen to a hundred miners working a single pit. Most of these older collieries were located south of the river Ruhr. As technical advanced made it possible to exploit more difficult reserves of coal, salt, ores and sand (for glass) the mining industry quickly grew and many new mining concessions were granted within the Ruhrrevier. In 1828 the first horse-drawn railways are built, followed in 1846 by the first railway proper. By this time hundreds of mines were in operation, and some had already been closed due to lack of reserves or technical difficulties (gas, water, gallery collapse and sinking).

The mining activities around Mülheim a/d Ruhr and Essen lead to infrastructure projects to connect these mines with the Harbour on the Ruhr. So in 1839 the Aktienstrasse (Shares Street) was opened connecting the two cities funded by industrialists buying a stake in the road company. At the same time several horse-drawn railways were in operation between the scattered mines and the harbour or to the Aktienstrasse.

Coal mines and related heavy industries such as blast furnaces, steel works and glass factories were spread throughout the Ruhrrevier, with a concentration between the rivers Ruhr and Emscher. Most mines were located in Bochum, Essen, Witten, Dortmund and Hattingen. Outlying places along the river Lippe or on the left bank of the Rhine had fewer mines in operation. In Kamp-Lintfort, for instance, only three mines were exploited, whilst Moers had 4 mines, Eneppe had 3, Neukirchen-Vluyn had 1 and Hamm had 6. Most mines had more than one pit. A number of 3 or 4 pits was most common with some mines having up to 7 pits per concession. These pits could be around the same town or village, but also be spread across several Ortschaften.

Tiefbau (mining coal below groundwater layers) quickly developed from about 1840 onwards as the possibilities to secure pits deeper than 50 metres became available with concrete tubing and freeze sinking. Franz Haniel had already experimented with Tiefbau in 1808 with the 46 metres vertical pit "Victoria" at Zeche Vollmond in Werne (now part of Bochum). In mining breaking groundwater layers caused major problems as the pit or the galleries would flood  with groundwater. For this a special system was used with a parallel pit where the water collected to be pumped out. In 1883  engineer Friedrich Hermann Poetsch is the first to sink a pit by freezing the subsoil, a method pioneered in Wales in the 1860s. In combination with concrete tubing securing the pit walls, this method made pits at depths of 70 and even over 100 metres possible.  In total almost 1300 mines were once in operation within the Ruhrrevier.

A total number of 1297 mines spread over 21 cities and rural districts made up the Ruhrrevier. Not all of these mines were in operation simultaneously. Some were closed before the mining boom of the second half of the 19th century. Most were shut down and dismantled between 1955 and 1985.

These mines were named after their concession or were given a fanciful name. The concession took the name of a local area, for instance a small hamlet, village or town. Names of farms or fieldnames were also used. Thus these concessions could me easily located on the maps made by the Bergbeamte (governmental Mining Official). Examples are Bruchstrasse, Cleverbank, Hasenwinkel, Herzkamp, Osterfeld and Westerholt. Other mines were given an aspirational name e.g. Bergmannsglück, Glück Auf, Gute Hoffnung, Freiheit, Geduld, Wohlgemut and Vereinigte Brüderschaft. Most mines, however, were named for people. These could be the original noble landowner or a member of the ruling elite (Prosper, Prinz Regent, Friedrich, Deutscher Kaiser, Maximillian, Graf Wittekind, Wilhelm II), saints and gods (Donar, Wodan, Sanct Peter, Sanct Paul, Bonifacius, Venus, Victoria, Fortuna), animals (Schwarzte Rabe, Haase), places (Java, Hibernia, Westphalia, Deutschland, Schleswig, Tremonia, Borussia), plants (Feigenbaum, Pfingstblume, Kirschbaum), politicians (Minister Stein, Fürst Hardenberg, Präsident), industrialists and bankers (Adolph von Hansemann, Franz Haniel, Carl Funke) and wives and children of company directors (Sophia, Margarethe, Helena, Eleonore, Charlotte and many, many more).

Ruhrrevier, mining in the Rhineland

Like a Forstrevier (forestry district) mining concessions were awarded within a so-called Bergbaurevier (mining district) and administered by a government official (Bergbeamte) who operated within a so-called Bergamt. In several places in the hills east of the Rhine coal deposits lay so close to the surface that they were mined in shallow pits during the middle ages. The centre of this early (surface) mining was located around Witten, Sprockhövel and Hasslinghausen (south of Dortmund and Bochum in the County of Mark) and in the County of Berg. The first surviving charter for mining dates from 1296 at Schüren House on the edge of the Emscher river.

Around 1700 mining of deeper coal seams is undertaking by blasting pits. This is mainly undertaken in the County of Berg and the County of Mark. By 1737 688 miners were working 105 mines within the latter county. These mines were state controlled by Prussia under the directorate principle. The Bergamt Mark was opened in 1738 in Bochum. Through the directorate principle the mining industry was subjected to state authorisation, control and supervision as an instrument of mercantile and economic policy. Large maps were made to assess and document mining for coal, salt and ore. These mining operations remained small-scale and local. This all changed when Freiherr vom Stein -a baron from Nassau- became Prussian governor of mining in 1784. He visited many foreign mines and introduced several improvements and modernised both the process, the planning and the regulation of mining. He reorganised the way concession boundaries were decided and introduced a joint management structure for the private mining companies by appointing state overseers.

He also introduced steam power in mining. So in 1804 the Ruhrrevier already counted 229 mines. From 1850 onwards many pits were given Malakoff-towers to house the hoist. Later these would be replaced by steel headframes. Within each concession several pits were dug to exploit the coal seams. Mines could be exploited by companies, by families and by conglomerates. As each concession had to be bought the state officials also looked beyond the local area for investors in the mining industry. The model mine Hibernia opened in 1855 and was the first to use concrete cast tubing to secure the pit walls. The nearby mine Shamrock was also exploited by an Irish industrialist.

Around 1846 work starts on a network of railways to connect the existing cities. Some mines already had wooden tracks where horses drew carts of coal to a river at some distance. The new railways lead to the exploitations of many more concessions, especially around the cities, whereas earlier mines had been concentrated along rivers. Many spur lines were built to make existing and new mines accessible. The railways also opened up possibilities for other heavy industry like steel and glass manufacturing. This combined with the excavation of shipping canals -e.g. Dortmund-Ems-Kanal 1899, Rhein-Herne-Kanal 1914 and Datteln-Hamm-Kanal 1915- after Dutch examples created a vast industrialised landscape dotted with mines, factories and housing colonies. The directorate principle became more regulatory over the decades, so from the mid-1800s owners of mining companies can take the economic and technical management into their own hands. This also lead to a rapid expansion of the number of mining concessions. Some concessions were short-lived, others were very profitable and comprised of many pits that were exploited for many decades.

Mining in the Ruhrrevier started in the south adjacent to the Ruhr river and the border with the County of Berg. Small-scale mining existed from medieval times onwards on a small scale in this border region where minable resources were located close to the surface. From 1840 onwards we see a spread of mining activities northwards towards the Lippe river.[image after Sven Sendfeld]

After the increase in imports of cheap coal from the USA, Yugoslavia and Slovakia after 1960 mining fell into decline. To better compete less profitable mines were closed and many miners were let go. In other companies cheaper labourers from Southern Europe (Spain, Greece and Italy) and beyond (Turkey and Morocco) were being employed for mining operations to remain profitable. Nowadays little remains. The Auguste Victoria Mine in Bottrop was closed in 2015. The last mine of the RAG Steinkohle AG still in operation is the Bergwerk Prosper-Haniel in Bottrop. The plan is to ultimately close this mine in 2018. After centuries mining will then cease to be an economic activity in the Rhineland and the Ruhrrevier will be closed.

White winter?

Is has been very mild the past months, so some plants are still growing whilst others are blooming before their time. Some of the winter-flowering plants are giving their best show ever this year... so no snow but instead large amounts of white flowers!

Helleborus niger (left) is also known as the Christmas rose, and this year this name proved to be factual. Prunus subhirtella 'Autumnalis' (middle) is also known as the Japanese winter cherry as it flowers between November and March; normally with few flowers in between cold-spells but this year in masses of blushed white blossoms. Viburnum tinus, originally from Southern Spain, is widely planted for its winter blooms. Never before did I see so many on this Laurestine.