The Forges Footbridge

Welcome to the Forges Footbridge. As it stretches across the Blavet, this bridge does far more than connect two riverbanks—it links medieval Hennebont with the industrial world that would later transform the entire area. The footbridge beneath your feet opened in 2007, replacing an earlier iron bridge built in 1921.

That first bridge carried the tracks of a small train running from Hennebont station to the enormous industrial complex directly across the river, in Inzinzac-Lochrist: the famous Forges d’Hennebont. Their story began in 1860, when brothers Émile and Henri Trottier built a factory beside the river, taking advantage of both its power and easy access to Hennebont’s port. The plant soon specialized in printed tinplate, a material that was essential to the sardine and vegetable canneries springing up all along the Breton coast.

And the effect on the region was enormous. Within just a few decades, thousands of local farmers traded their plows for metalworking tools and became factory workers. By 1936, at the height of production, nearly 3,000 people worked here.

For more than a century, this powerful working-class community—with its own culture, deep sense of solidarity, memorable strikes, and social tensions closely watched by the authorities—helped shape the identity of Hennebont itself. Then, in 1966, everything came to an abrupt halt. The furnaces were shut down for good, sending shock waves through the entire area.

Today, that industrial past lives on at the Forges Ecomuseum, housed in the factory’s former testing laboratory. And the footbridge beneath your feet remains one of the clearest symbols of the bond between Hennebont, its port, and the generations of metalworkers who helped build its modern identity.