Wat Phra Non

What the official record says

Where Wat Phra Non 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 B.E. 2053 date is the year the Phra Isuan pedestal inscription records work on the monasteries of the city, so it is a date for a campaign of repair rather than for this monastery's foundation. The name is also later than the building: the Fine Arts Department states plainly that Wat Phra Non is what the place came to be called afterwards, because its vihara held a reclining Buddha as the principal image.

The history of Wat Phra Non

The thing to know about Wat Phra Non before you walk in is that the Phra Non is gone. The Fine Arts Department is direct about it: the vihara still has the platform the reclining image lay on, and the image itself has collapsed completely. The department is equally direct that the name came afterwards — the monastery is called Wat Phra Non because the vihara held a reclining Buddha as its principal image, not because anybody recorded that name in its own time. A monastery named for a thing that no longer exists, under a name it was given later, is a fair introduction to what the Aranyik zone is.

What it does have is the pillars, and they are the best reason to come. The vihara roof was carried on square laterite columns, each cut as a single piece from top to bottom, over a meter on a side and four to five meters tall. Quarrying, moving and standing monoliths at that scale is a serious undertaking in laterite, which is soft when it comes out of the ground and hardens in the air, and the row of them standing in the open is the single most impressive piece of engineering in the forest quarter. Between them the vihara walls were pierced with light slots or balustered openings rather than built solid.

The plan runs east-west inside a rectangular enclosure. The ordination hall is at the very front, with eight boundary-stone bases set around it; behind it comes the reclining-Buddha vihara; behind that the principal chedi, a bell in the form the department calls particular to Kamphaeng Phet; and behind that again a building base and a square mondop. At the front of the monastery, outside the sacred precinct, stands a group of buildings that is unusual to find surviving at all: an open pavilion, a washroom and a well. The monastic plumbing of a fifteenth-century forest monastery is not something most sites still show.

The dating is a stylistic reading rather than a document. Damrongrit Sombunsiri's Silpakorn University study of B.E. 2524 found two campaigns in the fabric, one before B.E. 1906 and one about B.E. 2053 — the later tied to the year the Phra Isuan pedestal inscription records repairs to the monasteries of the city under Ramathibodi II — and judged the ordination hall the last thing built. Pitthaya Damdenngam had excavated the hall, the reclining-Buddha vihara, the chedi and the mondop in B.E. 2508 and rebuilt the boundary-stone platforms; a further campaign in B.E. 2544 strengthened the mondop, the inner and outer walls, the cells, the pavilion, the well and the privy.

What you actually see

The monolithic laterite pillars of the vihara: square columns each cut from a single piece, over a meter on a side and four to five meters tall, still standing in their rows.

The empty platform where the reclining Buddha lay. The image has collapsed entirely and only the base it rested on survives.

The ordination hall at the front of the monastery, with eight boundary-stone bases set around it.

The principal chedi behind the vihara, a bell in the form the Fine Arts Department treats as particular to Kamphaeng Phet, with a building base and a square mondop behind it again.

The group at the front of the monastery, outside the sacred precinct: an open pavilion, a washroom and a well — the working parts of a forest monastery, rarely still legible.

The pierced walls of the vihara, cut with light slots or balustered openings rather than built solid.

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.

• What the reclining image looked like and how long it was. Nothing in the official record read gives a measurement, a description or a date for its collapse.
• What the monastery was called in its own time. The department states that Wat Phra Non is a later name and does not supply an earlier one.
• Which subdistrict it is in. The SAC record and the department's text say Nong Pling; the register's subdistrict polygon layer returns Sa Kaeo (620119) for this coordinate.
• The number of the laterite pillars and where they were quarried, neither of which any source read states.
• Whether the two building campaigns identified in 1981 can be separated in the standing fabric, or rest on the stylistic reading alone.

Wat Phra Non: 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 Kamphaeng Phet’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.