Fengfeng found an ancient building built about 200 years ago. Come and explore it.

In Fengfeng mining area of Handan city and Liugangxi village of villages and towns

There is an ancient building-"Pit Yard".

It was built about 200 years ago in the middle and late Qing Dynasty.

It is the only known pit yard in North China.

It fills a blank in the history of ancient residential buildings in North China.

What is a pit yard?

"Pit yard", also known as "cellar yard". It is a courtyard formed by digging a deep pit vertically downward on the flat ground or using the height difference of the cliff, forming an artificial earth cliff around the pit as the cliff body for excavating the cave, and then digging and building the cave in depth along the cliff body. Because its courtyard is deeply hidden below the ground level, it is very hidden. Therefore, people say that this kind of courtyard is "when you enter the village, you can’t see the courtyard, you can’t see people when you see trees, you only smell chickens and dogs, and the caves are underground." The caves dug in the courtyard of the pit yard are also called "sunken caves".

Topographic characteristics and architectural pattern of pit yard

The "pit yard" is mostly square or rectangular according to the terrain characteristics, and some are round. The residents in the pit yard have single-family houses and several households share the area in the pit. The depth of caves is generally 8 to 10 meters; It consists of a main cave and auxiliary caves on both sides, forming a building pattern of "one main and two auxiliary caves" in parallel or "one main and one auxiliary cave" and "H" shape.

So what are the distinctive and unique regional characteristics of Fengfeng’s pit yard?

The construction scale is large.

The pit yard in Liugangxi is located on the cliff slope in the south of the village. Locals call it "Nanyao", with a diameter of about 30 meters and a depth of about 6 meters. There are 18 caves. Among them, four caves are basically intact, with cave doors, windows and kiln bodies; The brick cave doors of 8 caves collapsed and the kiln bodies were well preserved; Six caves have collapsed.

Strange layout

The upper part is basically round, which shows that the sky is vast and far away, which is conducive to the lighting and ventilation of the pit yard; The bottom is square, which highlights the household grounding, the balance of yin and yang, and embodies the orderly layout of the building space. In our country, the layout of the "round place" like this is unique and very unique.

Cave dwellings have diverse structures.

Because the south of the pit yard is a hard mountain, the west is a cliff with half a cliff and half a soil, and the east and north are loess cliffs, the caves drilled on the loess cliffs in the east and north of the pit yard are in back-to-back series shape, the caves drilled in the west are parallel caves, and the caves cannot be drilled in the south because of the hard rock. Among them, four of the eight caves located in the east face the pit yard and four face the pit yard; There are 7 caves in the north, 4 facing the courtyard and 3 facing the courtyard, which are in an H-shaped parallel structure.

The cave layout is special.

The cave is about 8 meters deep, 3.5 meters wide and 3 meters high. The main cave has a complete brick hole, and the hole has two wooden doors, and three plate-type wooden lintels are left on the doors; There is a channel communication between caves; The top of the cave is mostly a brick dome, and some of it is an earth dome. What is even more peculiar is that the caves located on the north side of the courtyard and facing the north end of the courtyard communicate with the caves that open to the outside, and there is also a hidden hole in the communicated caves, forming a special layout in which a group of "┓"-shaped caves are connected in series with three kilns, and exits facing the inside and outside of the courtyard are left in both open holes and serial holes.

As an ancient and unique rural residential building form, Liugang West Pit Yard once lived in four families for many years, bearing and witnessing the good memories of generations of villagers. In 2017, due to disrepair, some caves collapsed due to rain erosion, and people moved out one after another until they were uninhabited. However, because of its unique architectural form and some architectural elements, it still retains precious archaeological and tourism values. Sihao Road in Liugangxi Village is connected with the tourist ring road, adjacent to the scenic spots such as Xiangtangshan and Xiangtangshui Town in Hecun Town. It is hoped that the relevant departments will strengthen the restoration and protection, and it is expected that "Tiankengyuan" will also take advantage of the strong east wind of Fengfeng cultural tourism industry and become a new tourist attraction in Fengfeng.

Source: Micro-peak