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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The church of Saint-Édouard, known as the "Church of the 12th," was built in 1899 in the mining town of pit 12 of Lens, active since 1894. It was built to serve the workers and their families, under the leadership of Edward Bollaert, Director of Mines, whose name it bears. Blessed in 1901 by Bishop Williez, bishop of Arras, it was almost completely destroyed during the First World War, then rebuilt in the same way between 1922 and 1923 by architects Louis-Marie Cordonnier and his son Louis-Stanislas.

The church, of neo-Roman style marked by a brick regionalism, is distinguished by its bell tower-porch styled with an arrow from the slates. It forms part of a coherent set including a presbytery, a school group, and accommodation for sisters and management. Ranked a historical monument in 2009 with its presbytery, it was decommissioned in 2024, then sold in 2025 to become a school yard dedicated to heritage trades, managed by a subsidiary of the NA Group.

City No.12, designed by engineer Elijah Reumaux in 1896, reflects the rapid urbanization associated with mining, from 3,000 to 20,000 inhabitants in a few decades. The church, symbol of the community life of minors, was rebuilt after 1918 at the same time as schools and housing, maintaining an architectural unit despite the addition of an additional level to school buildings. Its elongated plan, without transept, with two sides and a semicircular apse, makes it a typical example of the industrial churches of Nord-Pas-de-Calais.

In 2025, its sale on Leboncoin as a "four-room house" sparked up the emolument, before it was purchased by a training centre. This project aims to preserve the building while training artisans (stone tailors, masons, roofers) in a context of reconversion of the mining heritage. The church remains a major testimony of the social and architectural history of the region, linked to the industrial era and its post-war reconstructions.

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