Yi Bae-won House

This house was first built in 1917 by Yi Bae-won, grandfather of the present owner Yi Seo-yeong. At the time of construction it comprised several buildings — a main women's quarters (anchae), a men's quarters (sarangchae), a servants' quarters, a gatehouse and storehouses — but today only the anchae, the sarangchae, part of the wall and the gate remain. The anchae and sarangchae were originally linked by a corridor set within an inner wall, allowing passage between them, but they were separated in 1959 when the sarangchae began to be used as a Won Buddhist worship hall. A storehouse now stands to the left of the gate, said to occupy the site of the thatched house where the great-grandfather once lived. Yi Bae-won's father, Yi Seok-sun, built up the family fortune through the yeast (nuruk) trade and grew into a wealthy landowner of Hamna-myeon, a manseokkun whose annual harvest was said to reach ten thousand sacks of rice. He also ran Samseong Farm, was a major shareholder of Jeonbuk Chuksan, a livestock company, and served as a director of Hwangdeung Industries. His eldest son, Yi Jip-cheon, was a noted educator and calligrapher. Like the houses of the other three wealthy households in the area, the family is well known for having practised noblesse oblige, dispensing charity despite its great wealth. The plan of the anchae consists of rooms, a wooden-floored hall (daecheong) and a kitchen, arranged in an L shape. The structure rests square columns on dressed plinth stones set upon a platform of long dressed stones, the columns joined above by purlins (dori). The bracket style is the mulikgong type, with a soro block inserted between the changbang and jangyeo members. In the framing, the section above the daecheong is a one-interior-column, five-purlin structure, while the section where the rooms meet the daecheong is a two-interior-column, five-purlin structure. The roof is a hipped-and-gabled (paljak) roof bent into an L shape to connect the two wings. The sarangchae has the same structure as the anchae, but with a more developed raised veranda (numaru).

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Iksan, Jeonbuk

Designation

Provincial Folklore Heritage · 시도민속문화유산