Yeongmojae Hall, Okcheon

This hall was built for the memorial rites of Jo Heon (pen name Jungbong, 1544–1592), a Confucian scholar and righteous-army commander of the reign of King Seonjo of Joseon. It is thought to have originally been built as a dwelling for a tomb caretaker. The date of its first construction is not recorded, but an inscription on the ridge purlin of the main hall records that it was first erected in the imsin year, the fourth cyclical year after the Chongzhen era [1812], on the third day of the tenth month, and was later rebuilt, with the pillars raised at the hour of o and the ridge beam raised at the hour of yu on the twenty-first day of the third month of the gyeongsul year, Dangi year 4303 [1970]. Around Donong-ri, where Yeongmojae stands, there are many other sites associated with Jo Heon, including his tomb, his spirit-path stele, and Pyochungsa Temple. The building has a five-kan front and a kan-and-a-half side, built as a five-purlin, plain-bracket (mindori) structure with double eaves under a hipped-and-gabled tiled roof, serving as a jaesil, a house for ancestral memorial rites. Its floor plan comprises a kitchen, a master room, an upper room, a daecheong (the main wooden-floored hall) and an across-room, with a narrow veranda (toenmaru) running along the front of the rooms. This layout is a typical "il"-shaped (one-line) plan of the central region: it sits on a tall foundation of natural stone, with trapezoidal, rounded cornerstones at the front and roughly shaped natural fieldstones (deombeong-jucho) elsewhere, topped with square pillars. The ceiling is finished in the gomi-banja style, a low, boarded loft-ceiling used to keep out the cold, and the earthen storage space (togwang) between the veranda in front of the master room and the kitchen was used to store unhulled rice before milling; its opening is distinctive in having grooves cut into paired door-posts so that planks could be raised and lowered to open and close it. The floorboards retain an older technique, and the frame, with a single interior column supporting a five-purlin structure, shows comparatively distinctive carpentry. Unlike the four-kan jaesil typical of the nearby Yeongdong region, this plan is of a type often found in Chungcheong-do houses built for ease of daily living. Yeongmojae in Donong-ri, Okcheon, is a building raised for the memorial rites of Jo Heon, Confucian scholar and righteous-army commander under King Seonjo. Its plan follows the typical commoner-house form of the central region, while its ceiling, reflecting the hall's mountain setting, takes the gomi-banja form characteristic of cold regions. Although substantially rebuilt in 1970, the building dates originally from 1812 and retains its original form comparatively well; taken together, its structural members, construction, floorboards, gomi-banja ceiling and building techniques give it ample value for preservation.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Okcheon, Chungbuk

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료