The old temple of Phanom Thuan, whose ordination hall carries a garuda-and-naga arch over the door and Chinese porcelain set into the stucco of its pediment. It is the one temple here registered and bounded in a single Royal Gazette instrument, in B.E. 2544.
วัดบ้านทวน · Wat Ban Thuan
| Official name | วัดบ้านทวน — Wat Ban Thuan |
|---|---|
| Where | Phanom Thuan, Phanom Thuan, Kanchanaburi |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 118, special part 33 ง, 9 April B.E. 2544 Registered AND bounded in a single instrument, unlike the four monuments above. The ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง ขึ้นทะเบียนและกำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน was read by eye from the scan in this run: it is made under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments, Antiques, Objects of Art and National Museums Act B.E. 2504, covers five provinces at once — Kanchanaburi, Nakhon Pathom, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani and Suphanburi — and โบราณสถานวัดบ้านทวน ตำบลพนมทวน อำเภอพนมทวน จังหวัดกาญจนบุรี is item 1, at ๓ ไร่ ๒ งาน ๑๕ ตารางวา. It is signed ๒๐ ตุลาคม พ.ศ. ๒๕๔๓ by Group Captain Awut Ngoenchuklin, Director-General — the same signatory the Surat Thani run identified on a B.E. 2544 instrument. Optical character recognition read the section as มาตรา ๑ and the Act as พ.ศ. ๒๕๐๕; the scan read by eye says มาตรา ๗ and พ.ศ. ๒๕๐๔. |
| Coordinates | 14.129000, 99.703716 Fine Arts Department register, monument 0004868 (GPS) |
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.
This is the only one of the six temples on this page whose registration and land boundary were made in one act, and the youngest instrument among them by sixty-five years. It is also the only one whose entire recorded history is explicitly a legend.
Wat Ban Thuan stands in Moo 2, Tambon Phanom Thuan, in Amphoe Phanom Thuan on the eastern side of Kanchanaburi province, out towards the Suphanburi border. It is a working temple and an unusually complete one: an ordination hall, a chedi and a mondop of some age still standing together inside what was once a precinct wall, with the modern buildings of a living monastery around them.
Its recorded history is a legend and the Fine Arts Department says so in the first four words. There is a legend handed down, the register begins, that the community here was formed by people who fled the fighting with Burma in the Ayutthaya period and settled at Ban Thuan. That is the whole of the department's history for the temple. No date attaches to it, no source is named for it, and this page does not turn it into a founding.
What the department does supply in quantity is description, and the ordination hall is worth the visit for one detail alone. Its pediment is stucco worked into foliate scrollwork and inset with Chinese porcelain — broken ceramic set into plaster, a technique that runs through central Thai temple decoration from the late Ayutthaya period into the Rattanakosin, and that ties a provincial temple in Kanchanaburi to the maritime trade in Chinese wares. Above the eastern doorway is a naga sadung arch, the undulating naga form, with a garuda seizing nagas on its front face.
The rest of the hall repeats that mixture of the vernacular and the ornamental. It is brick and stucco with a porch and a projecting eave carried on four wooden posts and side entrances at the porch, and a pair of doorways side by side rather than a single one. The frame of the eastern door carries painted decoration — flowers and animals — which is a fragile survival and the sort of thing that vanishes in a well-meant repaint. Three windows to a side have moulded floral panels above the frames.
Behind the ordination hall is a bell-form chedi of brick and stucco: a square lotus-moulded set for the harmika, round ringed sections above it, and the spire collapsed. The mondop is four-porched with doors on all four sides and a circumambulation path around it, its eastern and western pediments carrying garuda and foliate work, and its crown built up as a stepped square prasat.
The precinct wall itself has effectively gone. The register records that it once enclosed the ordination hall and that nothing of it now shows on the ground except brick-and-stucco gateway arches on the east and on the south, standing where the wall used to run. The department's condition note is that the monument has been restored and is in good order, with the chedi the exception: decayed and not restored.
In legal terms this is the tidiest record of the six on this page. The Royal Gazette instrument of 9 April B.E. 2544 both registered the monument under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments Act B.E. 2504 and fixed its land boundary at 3 rai 2 ngan 15 square wa, in one act covering five provinces. The plan attached to it names thirteen features inside the boundary, from the old ordination hall and the chedi and the old mondop down to the bell tower, the public-address horn and the latrines, which is a good reminder that a monument boundary is drawn around a working monastery and not around a museum. BAANLYY does not represent the temple and nothing here is legal or religious advice.
The ordination hall: brick and stucco, with a porch and a projecting eave carried on four wooden posts, side entrances at the porch, and two doorways set side by side rather than one.
The stucco pediment of the ordination hall, worked into foliate scrollwork and inset with Chinese porcelain — the single most distinctive thing on the site.
The naga sadung arch above the eastern door frame, with a garuda seizing nagas on its front face; and on the door frame itself, painted decoration of flowers and animals.
Three windows to each side wall, with moulded floral panels above the frames.
The bell-form chedi behind the hall: brick and stucco, with a square lotus-moulded set carrying the harmika and round ringed sections above, its spire collapsed. The Fine Arts Department records it as decayed and unrestored where the rest of the monument has been repaired.
The mondop: four-porched, with doorways on all four sides and a circumambulation path around it, garuda and foliate pediments on the east and west, and a crown built up as stepped square prasat tiers.
Two brick-and-stucco gateway arches, on the east and on the south, standing on the line of a precinct wall that no longer shows on the ground.
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.
| Hours | Not established from an official source. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Not established from an official source. |
| Dress | A working monastery. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off before entering the ordination hall or the mondop. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Moo 2, Tambon Phanom Thuan, Amphoe Phanom Thuan, Kanchanaburi — on the eastern side of the province towards the Suphanburi border, about 40 kilometres from Kanchanaburi town. |
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 Fine Arts Department's description of the ordination hall records a stucco pediment worked into foliate scrollwork and inset with Chinese ceramic wares. Setting broken porcelain into plaster is a decorative technique that runs through central Thai temple building from the late Ayutthaya period into the Rattanakosin, and it links a provincial temple like this one to the maritime trade that brought Chinese wares up the rivers. The department does not date the work, and this page does not either.
No source read for this page says. The Fine Arts Department's whole recorded history for the temple is a legend, and it is labelled as one: มีตำนานเล่าสืบต่อมาว่า, there is a legend handed down, that the community here was formed by people fleeing the fighting with Burma in the Ayutthaya period. No date attaches to that story, and unusually the department's very detailed architectural description attaches no period to the ordination hall, the chedi or the mondop either. The monument was registered on 9 April B.E. 2544.
Yes, and its registration is the cleanest of the six temples on this page. The Royal Gazette instrument of 9 April B.E. 2544 registered it and fixed its land boundary in a single act, made under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments, Antiques, Objects of Art and National Museums Act B.E. 2504. It covers five provinces and Wat Ban Thuan is item 1, at 3 rai 2 ngan 15 square wa. The order was signed on 20 October B.E. 2543 by Group Captain Awut Ngoenchuklin as Director-General.
Good, with one exception the Fine Arts Department names. Its condition note records that the monument has been restored and is in good order, and that the chedi behind the ordination hall is decayed and has not been restored. The precinct wall is a separate loss: the register records that nothing of it shows on the ground any more except the brick-and-stucco gateway arches on the east and the south, which now stand alone on the line the wall once followed.
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 Kanchanaburi’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.
Every fact on this page is drawn from the sources above. Where they disagree, this page says so rather than choosing silently. Registrations, fees, hours and access change; confirm anything you are relying on with the authority concerned. BAANLYY LLC is a Nevada company and a listing portal, does not represent any temple, and offers no legal or religious advice.