Wonsaam Hermitage

Wonsaam is a jaesil (ritual house) built to guard the graves of three generations of a family — Kim Ja-gang, his son Wan, and his grandson Yeong-gyun — and to hold memorial rites at their graves. The building was originally founded as a jaesa below the grave of Kim Ja-gang's mother, of the Andong Gwon clan, by Kim Ja-gang's seventh-generation descendant Yu Eum (1607–1680), who named it "Saam" (思庵). His son, known by the pen name Manhyu (1625–1694), moved it to its present site around 1685 and renamed it "Wonsaam"; the "Writ for Raising the Ridgepole on Relocation" that he composed for the occasion survives today. Wonsaam sits facing south, deep in a valley that comes into view on the right after passing through the centre of Nokjeon-myeon township. At the front, a gate-quarters building and left and right wing buildings join in sequence to enclose the rear courtyard, forming a U-shaped range of auxiliary buildings; set back from this, at a distance of about one kan, stands the straight-line main building, so that overall the complex forms an open, gapped square layout. A commemorative board recording a reconstruction, currently hanging in Wonsaam, bears the date "the second year of the reigning king, eulchuk," from which the reconstruction is presumed to date to 1865, the second year of King Gojong of Joseon's reign. The building is notable for the way the openings on the rear face of its three-kan daecheong, with emphasis on the central bay, are composed, and for the way thick round columns finished in the plain muikgong bracket style (a bracket style without decorative wings) raise the dignity of the main building. In addition, the paired sliding window (yeongssangchang) on the rear face of the daecheong, with a central mullion bar, is a window type found mainly before the seventeenth century, and the fact that its mullion bar can be removed as needed makes it a rare example.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Andong, Gyeongbuk

Designation

Provincial Folklore Heritage · 시도민속문화유산