Wat Khok Mafueang

What the official record says

Where Wat Khok Mafueang 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 dating here is better than usual for this province because it hangs on a named person who is independently recorded at another monastery nearby, rather than on a chronicle. The footprint itself carries a cut date of B.E. 2468.

The history of Wat Khok Mafueang

Everything about this place runs back to one man. The register records that a layman called Chai Phromsakun started the monastery around B.E. 2417 and then went and asked Phra Winaithon — Chui, the monk who had painted the murals at Wat Chonthara Singhe eight kilometers away — to come and be abbot. He came, and the buildings he left are why this is a registered monument with fourteen and a half rai of protected ground, the largest holding in this run.

The ordination hall faces east. It is a masonry hall of the southern barn type with a gallery all round, 9.50 meters wide and 15 long. Three doorways open at the front under mondop-shaped surrounds, with a large niche between them that used to hold a Buddha image — the register notes, in passing and without comment, that the monastery has moved that image somewhere safer. The back wall is solid. Four windows a side, also under mondop surrounds, and above them a corner-indented chedi finial with its own niche and image.

The front gable is molded and painted with Narayana riding Garuda. The back gable is a celestial palace with Indra on Erawan. Inside, the principal image is a seated stucco Buddha in the meditation posture, lacquered and gilded, with a smaller gilded image in the subduing-Mara posture on either side. Behind the three of them a painted glass-house arch is surrounded by trees. The ceiling is divided into eight bays and the middle four carry the sun and moon chariots. The register records the hall as damaged.

The abbot house is where the carving is. Three painted boards along the beam course behind the shrine room run a continuous life of the Buddha: the birth, the display of the arts and the drive through the park where he met the four signs on one board; the great renunciation, the cutting of the hair, the years of austerity, Sujata with the milk rice and the gold bowl floating up to the naga palace on the next; and then the three daughters of Mara dancing, the first sermon to the five ascetics, and the Parileyyaka forest. Also in that room is a gilded and glass-set wooden shrine over a Buddha footprint cut with the date B.E. 2468, and a crowned Buddha in the calming-the-ocean posture, carved in wood and gilded, which the register attributes to Phra Winaithon.

A third wooden house to the west dates itself on a beam board: built by Phra Chan Phum Kusonwanno in B.E. 2484. It is raised high on posts under a double hip roof with a front porch and a flight of steps each side, the inside and the outside both cut through with fretwork flowers and foliage, and butterflies around a star in each of the four ceiling corners. The register says some of the painting inside the monks houses has faded.

What you actually see

The east-facing ordination hall, 9.50 by 15 meters, with a gallery all round, three mondop-shaped doorways and a corner-indented chedi finial carrying its own image niche.

Narayana riding Garuda molded and painted on the front gable, and a celestial palace with Indra on Erawan on the back.

Three painted beam boards in the abbot house running a continuous life of the Buddha from the birth through to the Parileyyaka forest.

The gilded wooden shrine over a Buddha footprint cut with the date B.E. 2468, and the carved and gilded crowned Buddha in the calming-the-ocean posture beside it.

The wooden house west of the hall, dated on its own beam board to B.E. 2484, with fretwork foliage inside and out and butterflies around a star in each ceiling corner.

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.

• Where the principal Buddha image from the front niche has gone. The register says only that the monastery moved it somewhere safe.
• Whether the carved work in the abbot house is really by Phra Winaithon. The register attributes it to him and names no signature or document.
• How much of the painting is still legible. The register records the ordination hall as damaged and some of the house painting as faded, without saying which scenes.
• The royal grade and the monastic order, neither of which any official register consulted states.
• Why this monastery, with no royal grade and no famous history, carries the largest protected area of the six.
• Opening hours and whether anything is charged. No official source consulted publishes either.

Wat Khok Mafueang: 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 Narathiwat’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.