La Ricamarie: coal, strikes and memory near Saint-Etienne

Tucked into the Ondaine valley just south-west of Saint-Etienne, in the Loire department, La Ricamarie is a town shaped almost entirely by coal. Forges and mines drew workers to these slopes from the 18th century, and the community grew large enough to break away as an independent commune in 1843.

A town born of coal

By the early 1700s there were already several pits here, and through the 19th century La Ricamarie became one of the busiest mining communities of the Saint-Etienne basin, as well as a stronghold of the early French labour movement led by figures such as Michel Rondet.

The fusillade du Brule

The town's name is bound up with a tragedy. On 16 June 1869, during a general miners' strike, soldiers fired on a crowd gathered at the ravine of le Brule, killing fourteen people, among them a baby. The massacre shocked the nation and became a landmark in the history of workers' rights; Emile Zola drew on such events for his novel Germinal. A bronze monument with fourteen stars, unveiled in 1989, honours the victims, and a small mining museum keeps the memory of the pits alive.

Where it lies

La Ricamarie sits at around 580 metres only a few kilometres from the centre of Saint-Etienne, on the edge of the Pilat hills and close to the Haute-Loire.

Note: this article touches on a historical tragedy and is intended as factual local history.