Noen Phra Chedi, Tha Than

What the official record says

Where Boransathan Noen Phra Chedi is

When was it founded — and what actually establishes that?

Thai temple histories mix two different kinds of statement, and this guide keeps them apart. What a register, a gazette entry, an inscription or a dated royal act shows is one thing. What the chronicles and the temple itself hold is another, and it is worth telling as what it is.

The department states outright that the monument has no clear history. What it has instead is four laboratory dates and a living monastery 300 m away with seven red sandstone boundary stones in the Ayutthaya manner, from an old timber ordination hall long since pulled down.

The history of Boransathan Noen Phra Chedi

This is the most recent registration in the guide and one of the plainest things in it. Noen Phra Chedi is three brick chedi standing between about one and four meters high in open ground at Tha Than. Only the cores survive. The Fine Arts Department says so without softening it: nothing of the architectural form can be studied from what remains. There is no name on the site, no inscription, no chronicle entry and no founder.

So the department did the other thing. Four brick samples went for thermoluminescence dating — two from the first mound, returning 354 plus or minus 10 and 379 plus or minus 9 years, and two from mound two, returning 335 plus or minus 7 and 364 plus or minus 8. Taken together that is roughly 328 to 388 years before the samples were measured, which puts the brick in the late Ayutthaya period, somewhere between the reigns of Prasat Thong and Phetracha. That is a dated fact about the material, not an attribution, and it is the only hard date the site has.

The human account comes from 300 m to the north-east. Phra Khru Woradit Wuthisan, abbot of Wat Tha Lat Nuea, told the surveyors that a monastery of the Ayutthaya period once stood on this mound and that it later moved to the present monastery. The department records this as the abbot's information. It is worth taking seriously, because the present monastery holds things consistent with it: a Rattanakosin-period crowned chedi, restored in B.E. 2549, and seven red sandstone boundary stones in the Ayutthaya manner that belonged to an old timber ordination hall standing beside that chedi, long since pulled down.

Put the laboratory dates and the abbot's account side by side and the department's conclusion is a careful one, and it says so in its own words: the site is assumed to have been a monastery of the Ayutthaya period that moved to Wat Tha Lat Nuea in the Rattanakosin era. Assumed. Not recorded. That sentence is the reason this page exists — a monument with no history and four numbers is a better advertisement for how the Thai state actually dates things than any temple with a confident founding year.

What you actually see

Three brick chedi cores standing in open ground, roughly one to four meters high, with no surviving outer form to read.

The registered boundary around them — 2 rai 3 ngan 78 sq wa, marked out on the 1:250 plan that was bound into the B.E. 2568 gazette instrument.

Wat Tha Lat Nuea about 300 m to the north-east, which the abbot's account makes the successor to whatever stood here.

At that monastery, a crowned chedi in the Rattanakosin manner restored in B.E. 2549, and seven red sandstone boundary stones of Ayutthaya workmanship from an ordination hall that no longer exists.

Open farmland on every side: this is a field with three brick stumps in it, not a visitor attraction, and it should be approached that way.

Visiting: hours, admission, dress and photography

This is a working place of worship for millions of people rather than an attraction, and it is treated as one at the gate. Where a figure below is blank, no source we are prepared to cite states it.

What we could not establish

Every temple reference repeats claims nobody has checked. These are the ones we went looking for and could not stand up, listed so you know exactly where this page stops.

• The name of whatever stood here. The department records none, and the monument is registered under a description rather than a name.
• Whether the mound really is the predecessor of Wat Tha Lat Nuea. The department calls it an assumption and attributes the account to the present abbot.
• What the third chedi dates to. Two of the three mounds were sampled; the third was not, or at least no result for it is published in the register.
• The reference date for the thermoluminescence results. The register gives the ages in years before measurement and does not state when the samples were run.
• Whether anything else lies under the field. No excavation report for the site appears in the register, only the brick dating.

Boransathan Noen Phra Chedi: common questions

Where to go from here

Before you go, read the guide to Buddhism and temple etiquette in Thailand — dress, footwear, where photography is not welcome and how to behave around monks. The rest of Chachoengsao’s temples are covered here too.

Every temple here sits in a place worth reading about on its own terms. The nationwide temple guide covers the other provinces to the same documentary standard as this page, and says on each one what the record establishes and what it does not.

If you are thinking about more than a visit: work out which Thai visa route fits your situation, and see what is available to rent and buy in residences across Thailand.