Forges des Salles Metalworking Village

Forges des Salles is an iron-working village in the heart of Brittany that has the appearance of a garden village. A blast furnace and forge were built in 1623. The ironworks was destroyed during the French Revolution but a new forge was built in 1815 and a blast furnace soon afterwards. By the mid-1850s there were three furnaces, a foundry, a refinery and a slitting mill for making bar iron and nails. When it closed in 1877 the site was ‘fossilised’. In 1992, the owners and a Friends’ Association began a long restoration and opened it to the public. They installed a new exhibition in 2015 and furnished many of the buildings. Visitors see the stores for charcoal and ore, carpenters’ and blacksmiths’ shops, offices, the dwellings for workers, the owner’s mansion, a chapel and a works school. The later blast furnaces of firebrick were dismantled but the furnace of 1840s is among the best preserved in Europe, complete with its charging and blowing houses and the timber bridge for trams of charcoal and ore.