Bonghwa Chuwonjae Hall

Chuwonjae, standing in a valley to the right of Chungjae Jongtaek (the head house of the Gwon Beol family), lies not far from the house itself. Chungjae Gwon Beol first built a small jaesil, a hall for tending ancestral graves, to look after the graves of his maternal grandparents, Jubugong and his wife, and of his own parents. When Gwon Beol himself died in exile at Sakju during the Eulsa Sahwa, a political purge of 1545, his remains were brought here and a jaesil built to house them. His descendants later rebuilt it in 1671. Backed by a hill and facing south-east, the jaesil differs somewhat in form from the type commonly seen in the northern regions. It comprises a gate building fitted out as a storehouse for ritual provisions and for the woodblocks of the family's literary collection; a caretaker's house where the present caretaker lives; and, facing the gate building, a straight-fronted main hall known as the sangsil. The sangsil serves as a space used by the officiants and ritual attendants. To its east stands a two-storey pavilion building: the lower level has a door leading through to the grave, while the upper level appears to have served as a space for viewing the grave from afar during rites. Overall the complex follows the enclosed, courtyard-type layout often adopted in the northern regions, but it is made up of four separate buildings, each with a different function. The sangsil bears a wooden plaque reading "Chuwonjae", and stands on a two-tiered stone platform built considerably higher than the courtyard. Measuring seven bays across the front and one bay in depth, it is of considerable size for a jaesil building, with a floor plan of the "central hall flanked by side rooms" type. The two bays on the left contain a heated ondol room set behind a narrow eaves-side corridor about two ja wide, while the middle four bays form a spacious wooden-floored daecheong hall; on the right an ondol room is set with no such corridor. Both the left and right ondol rooms have four-panel folding doors opening onto the daecheong, and paired lattice doors and a single door on the front; only the right-hand room, however, has doors giving access from the rear and side, while the rear of the daecheong has paired panelled doors set above a low sill. Old construction techniques survive here, including the well-pattern wooden flooring and the mitred joinery of the door frames. Traces on the front pillar of the left ondol room suggest that a lintel was once fitted there, implying that its plan may originally have matched that of the right-hand room; a flat panelled ceiling is also fitted above the corridor. Only the front pillars are round; the upper structure is a three-purlin frame with round purlins and plank king-posts fitted with brackets, and the upper structure feels somewhat slight for the scale of the building. The gate building is of considerable size, nine bays across the front. Centred on the gate bay, the left side comprises a room for ritual attendants, a storehouse for ritual provisions, and a kitchen, while the right side is fitted out for storing woodblocks and the literary collection. The left section has a two-bay kitchen, two bays of ondol rooms with a front corridor, and a storeroom for ritual provisions; in front of the ondol rooms is a corridor about one ja wide with a further corridor projecting about one ja beyond it, a distinctive arrangement of flooring. Notably, the ondol rooms, kitchen and storeroom can all be entered directly from outside, a thoughtful arrangement ensuring that people could move smoothly during rites. The right section consists of one ondol room and two storerooms; the storerooms have well-pattern flooring and plank-wall finishes, suited to storing woodblocks and books and ensuring good ventilation. The east pavilion stands to the right in front of the sangsil. Its lower storey consists of a gate bay leading up to the grave, a storeroom, and a stair to the upper floor; the upper storey is open on the side facing the sangsil and the interior, but closed on the right side and at the rear with plank walls and panelled doors, with a low sill below the doors and ventilation openings in the plank wall above. A balustrade faces the inner courtyard, and the building has square pillars, a three-purlin frame and a single-eave gable roof; unlike the other buildings, however, its joinery and woodworking show later-period techniques, suggesting it was built comparatively recently. The caretaker's house is currently occupied by the jaesil's caretaker, but is presumed to have originally housed the officiants during the ancestral rites; its plan is a version of the central-hall type, with a two-bay wooden-floored hall at the centre flanked by ondol rooms. The kitchen on the left was added later and is not part of the original structure, though its beam supports are of an older style. Among the many jaesil buildings scattered across the northern region, this one is of considerable scale, and old construction techniques survive well in the sangsil, the caretaker's house and elsewhere; it is also valuable for the diversity of its functions.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Bonghwa, Gyeongbuk

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산