Bruay-la-Buissière

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Bruay-la-Buissière
Bruay-la-Buissière
Coordinates: 50°28′55″N 2°32′55″E / 50.4819°N 2.5486°E / 50.4819; 2.5486Coordinates: 50°28′55″N 2°32′55″E / 50.4819°N 2.5486°E / 50.4819; 2.5486
Country France
Region Nord-Pas-de-Calais
Department Pas-de-Calais
Arrondissement Béthune
Canton Bruay-la-Buissière
Intercommunality Artois
Government
 • Mayor (2008–2014) Alain Wacheux
Area
 • Land1 16.35 km2 (6.31 sq mi)
Population (2009)
 • Population2 23,621
 • Population2 Density 1,400/km2 (3,700/sq mi)
INSEE/Postal code 62178 / 62700
Elevation 30–106 m (98–348 ft)
(avg. 98 m or 322 ft)

1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

2 Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Bruay-la-Buissière is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region in northern France.

Geography

Slag heap
Miners’ houses


A former coalmining town some 6 miles (9.7 km) southwest of Béthune and 30 miles (48.3 km) southwest of Lille, at the junction of the D57 and the N47 roads.

History

With four coal mines, it was the headquarters of the mining company. The coal mines closed during the 1960s, to be replaced by light industrial work and chemical factories. In April 1972 the murder of miner's daughter Brigitte Dewevre became a politicized event when Pierre Leroy, a local middle-class lawyer associated with the local mining company, was arrested: La Cause du Peuple, the paper of the Maoist Gauche prolétarienne, publicized the case with the headline 'Bruay: And Now They Are Massacring Our Children!'[1]

The two places of Bruay-en-Artois and La Buissiere were joined as one commune in 1987.

A pit head of the Compagnie des mines de Bruay

Population

Historical population
Year Pop.  ±%  
1962 30,982—    
1968 32,341+4.4%
1975 29,435−9.0%
1982 26,649−9.5%
1990 24,927−6.5%
1999 23,998−3.7%
2009 23,621−1.6%

Sights

  • The Hotel de Ville (Town Hall), 47 m tall built in 1927. The windows recount scenes from the lives of miners.
  • The Art Deco swimming pool, built in 1936 (the last remaining Art Deco pool open to the public)
  • The Museum of mining.
  • The Church of Saint Martin, dating from the fifteenth century, was expanded and renovated in 1974.
  • Ballencourt manor in La Buissière, was built in 1777. Partially renovated, it now hosts the music school.
  • The donjon of the castle of La Buissière, built in 1310 by Mahaut, Countess of Artois.
  • The church at La Buissière, presently closed to the public for renovation work.
  • The Velodrome at La Buissière built by the Bruay Mining Co., in 1925.
  • The Museum of calculation and Scripture. Traces the history of writing and calculating machines such as the Enigma German coding machine.

See also

References

  1. ↑ La Cause de Peuple, 1 May 1972. Cited in 'Showdown at Bruay-en-Artois', ch. 1 of Richard Wolin, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s, Princeton University Press, 2010.

External links

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