6 View of the Town Centre and the Slag Heap Site

From the vantage point, the view falls on the centre of Ramsbeck with the Catholic St. Margaretha Church and on the south-western slope of the Dörnberg with the slag heap area of the former ore processing plant „Willibald“, renaturalised by tree growth. Individual steps in the terrain, however, still refer to the backfill with waste rock.

Construction of the processing plant, whose buildings rose in terraces on the slope, began in 1890. In the following decades, it was supplemented, renewed and kept technically up to date. In this plant, the raw ore mined underground was crushed and, after removal of the waste rock, enriched to form a lead and zinc concentrate. (More details about the production process can be found on the information board at the corresponding station on the mining trail).

This concentrate was first transported by narrow-gauge railway and later by special trucks to Bestwig and from there by railway to the works‘ own smelting plants. The waste rock, the so-called mountains, were dumped on a heap and were partly used in road construction. The entire processing plant was dismantled after the mine closed on 31 January 1974; together with the tailings piles, it had been part of Ramsbeck’s townscape for many decades.