Dongshan Su Gong Ancestral Hall

Dongshan Su Gong Ancestral Hall

Dongshan Su Gong Ancestral Hall is a cultural relic protection unit of Heyuan City.

Dongshan Su Gong Ancestral Hall (also known as Yongsi Hall) is located in the center of Suwei Village, its central position symbolizing the authority and glory of the clan lineage. Over five hundred years ago, Su Dongshan, the fifteenth-generation descendant of the great poet Su Dongpo, rose to the fifth rank in officialdom and served as a judicial officer in Guilin Prefecture. With his career flourishing and the clan thriving, in the seventeenth year of the Ming Chenghua era, Su built Yongsi Hall.

Dongshan Su Gong Ancestral Hall was first built during the Ming Dynasty and renovated in the Qing Dynasty. It faces south and is built in a traditional residential style. Most of the original structure has been damaged or collapsed, leaving only the third hall and the screen wall. The complex is 11.3 meters wide and 43.4 meters deep, covering an area of 490 square meters. It is constructed from brick, tile, earth, stone, and wood. The roof is of the hanging gable type with clay tiles, and the wall base is made of red sandstone slabs.

In front of the main gate at the central hall are five granite steps. On both sides of the veranda are red sandstone column bases, columns supporting beams, a conglomerate stone door frame, and door sills. The door frame is inlaid with a marble couplet carved in relief: the upper line reads “Loyal Minister of the Han Court,” the lower line “Scholarly Family of the Song Dynasty,” and the horizontal inscribed board reads “Dongshan Su Gong Ancestral Hall.”

The middle hall is three bays wide and two bays deep, with four red sandstone column bases supporting wooden pillars, and features a post-and-lintel plus through-tenon construction with 15 roof frames. The central screen door's horizontal inscribed board displays a wood plaque carved in relief with the inscription “Outer Han Mansion,” signed by “Su Mo, First-Ranked Imperial Grant Student of the 30th Year of the Daoguang Reign (1850).” On the side sections of the screen door, another carved wooden plaque hangs with the inscription “Selected as Number One Scholar,” signed by “the 12th Year of the Tongzhi Reign (1873)...”

The upper hall serves as the ancestral shrine, where ancestral tablets of the Su family are enshrined. The horizontal inscribed board above it bears a wood plaque reading “Yongen Hall.”