Hüttenstollen Osterwald

Here in the Osterwald hills near Salzhemmendorf you can go underground into a coal mine tunnel driven in 1842. The seams of Wealden coal, the youngest kind of hard coal, are only 35 to 70 centimetres thick, so miners had to work lying down. The tunnel now serves as a show mine and is a protected monument. Mining ended in 1953, and some of the coal fed the local Osterwald glassworks.