Su Manuscript Walled Town

This walled town was built during the Goryeo period. Until King Jeongjo moved the tomb of Crown Prince Sado here, it served as the administrative centre of the Suwon region from the Goryeo period through the early Joseon period. An eupseong is a walled town built in a settlement where a local administrative office such as a bu, gun or hyeon was established; it prepared against invasion in times of emergency while also serving an administrative function. According to the Geographical Appendix of the Veritable Records of King Sejong, the wall was up to 1,320 metres in circumference, and there were two wells within the town. The government offices of Suwon-bu, located inside the walled town, totalled more than 163.5 kan (units denoting the bay between pillars, used to measure a building's size) in all, with various buildings densely built in a fairly small area, and there appear to have been five ponds around the office buildings. However, in 1789, when the tomb of Crown Prince Sado, previously at Baebongsan Mountain in Yangju, was moved here, the seat of Suwon-bu was relocated to the foot of present-day Paldalsan Mountain in Suwon, and as a result most of the central buildings of the Suwon-bu government office and the surrounding houses were demolished. In 1999 part of the old walled town's ramparts was excavated. This revealed that the northern wall had been built using the rammed-earth (pandukbeop) method with some use of broken stone, while the western wall had been built using a mixed earth-and-stone technique on top of an old soil layer. At the site presumed to be the government office, five cultural layers were identified, ranging from the old soil layer to the late Joseon period; three Joseon-period building sites were investigated among these, and beneath them, in an earlier layer, the foundations of a large-scale Goryeo-period building were confirmed. Earthenware, porcelain and roof tiles dating from the Unified Silla period to the late Joseon period were excavated during the investigation; many of the tiles date from the 17th–18th centuries, which is thought to be related to the time the old walled town fell out of use.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Hwaseong, Gyeonggi

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물