Saint-Henri Church

The church of Saint-Martin was built on the site of an old church from the 11th century, dynamited by the Germans in 1917. The construction of the present church was entrusted to Maurice Boutterin and lasted from 1929 to 1932. The church is in Romano-Byzantine style and consists of a concrete framework covered with reconstituted stone for the exterior facings and slate for the roof. The columns and mullions of the bays are made of stone.

St. Martin's Church was built at the beginning of the 20th century on top of an old church itself, replacing a medieval church destroyed in the 1840s. St. Martin's Church, of neo-gothic architecture, is built in red brick and corbelled stone with a high five-bayed nave bordered by two aisles, preceded by a narthex with a statue of St. Anthony. It has a rectangular plan and is topped by a high square bell tower topped by a slender spire covered with slate, like the roof. The portal is surmounted by three groups of windows, a rose window and another group of three twin windows and a clock.

The present church is a reconstruction of the former church destroyed in 1918. The only remnant of the pre-1918 church is the statue of the Virgin Mary found in the rubble of the post-World War I ruins. On 9 June 1923, the reconstruction project was accepted and signed by the mayor of Lens. Looking very much like the previous one, its location was moved back several metres as part of the widening of the Place Jean Jaurès. Faced with the risks generated by the mine galleries passing under the city, the structure is no longer made of stone but of reinforced concrete and the walls are thus less thick. The pulpit was inaugurated in 1928 and the large organs were completed in April 1930.