Bruay-la-Buissière

Bruay-la-Buissière
Bruay-la-Buissière
Location within Nord-Pas-de-Calais region  Bruay-la-Buissière
Coordinates: 50°28′55″N 2°32′55″E / 50.4819°N 2.5486°ECoordinates: 50°28′55″N 2°32′55″E / 50.4819°N 2.5486°E
Country	France
Region	Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie
Department	Pas-de-Calais
Arrondissement	Béthune
Canton	Bruay-la-Buissière
Intercommunality	Artois
Government
• Mayor (2008–2014)	Alain Wacheux
Area^1	16.35 km^2 (6.31 sq mi)
Population (2009)^2	23,621
• Density	1,400/km^2 (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

• Communes of the Pas-de-Calais department

References

• INSEE commune file

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

• The CWGC graves in the Bruay-la-Buissière communal cemetery
• Official website of the commune (French)
• A website about the commune (French)
• The website of the intercommunality (French)
• Website of the Communauté du Bruaysis (French)
• Bruay-la-Buissière on the Quid website (French)