Historic House of the Jinyang Ha Clan, Changnyeong

This old house in the Changnyeong area consists of a main house (anchae), a detached men's quarters (sarangchae) and a gate house, of which only the main house is designated as heritage. The main house is said to have been built in 1425, the seventh year of King Sejong, when an ancestor eighteen generations before the present owner, Ha Gyeong-mok, settled in this village. However, during repair work a record reading "the twenty-fifth year of Qianlong" (1760, the thirty-sixth year of King Yeongjo) was discovered, suggesting that the house was rebuilt or repaired at that time. The main house is a single-row, "one"-shaped (一) building typical of the region south of the central provinces, with four bays across the front and one bay in depth, arranged from left to right as a small room, a wooden-floored hall (daecheong), a large room and a kitchen. Its most distinctive feature is the deep eaves, which project out almost as far as the height of the pillars supporting them. This reflects the climate of the southern region, where sunlight is strong, and was designed to let in as little sunlight as possible during the summer. The roof, unlike the more common Korean thatched roof made of rice straw, is covered with silver grass, woven and laid so that rainwater runs straight down the stalks rather than pooling on the roof, effectively preventing leaks and giving the roof a longer life than an ordinary straw roof. The floor of the daecheong hall is made of logs with only the upper surface planed flat and the bark simply stripped from the underside, a method long used in ordinary houses. The timber was joined without nails, using mortise-and-tenon joints, and the ceiling was left without an earthen layer, keeping the structure light. These features make the house a valuable resource for the study of houses in the region south of the central provinces. In the front yard there is a small kitchen garden, and rows of earthenware jars stand in front of the kitchen. Behind the main house is a flower-bed terrace, where several old trees together form a small grove. * This heritage site is generally open to the public, but viewing may be restricted for personal reasons of the owner and others.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Changnyeong, Gyeongnam

Designation

National Folklore Heritage · 국가민속문화유산