The late-Ayutthaya ordination hall in the Khlong Om Non loop that Thai architectural history calls the most complete building of its period anywhere around Bangkok, with tempera walls attributed to the Nonthaburi school.
วัดปราสาท · Wat Prasat
| Official name | วัดปราสาท — Wat Prasat |
|---|---|
| Where | Bang Krang, Mueang Nonthaburi, Nonthaburi |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya (มหานิกาย) |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง ขึ้นทะเบียนโบราณสถาน ราชกิจจานุเบกษา เล่ม ๗๙ ตอนที่ ๑๐๐ หน้า ๒๓๔๗ ๑๓ พฤศจิกายน ๒๕๐๕ ลงนามโดย ธนิต อยู่โพธิ์ อธิบดีกรมศิลปากร ประกาศ ณ วันที่ ๓๑ ตุลาคม ๒๕๐๕ Read from the scan the Fine Arts Department serves from its own file store. What is registered is the ordination hall together with a delimited parcel of about ๒ งาน ๓๐ ตารางวา — 920 square metres — which the announcement says is itself to be treated as part of the monument. The rest of the monastery is not registered, and the department holds no separate record for it. The second page of the same document is the boundary plan, drawn by the department's architecture division at 1:500, with the parcel dimensioned 40.00 by 23.50 metres. |
| Coordinates | 13.839160, 100.451976 Fine Arts Department, national monument register no. 0000205, point geometry from the department's own GIS (WGS84); the Department of Tourism's independent point is about forty-five metres away |
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 two versions of the attribution do not agree with each other: one places the work in Prasat Thong's reign, the other before his accession under his predecessor. Neither rests on a document, and the 1962 registration instrument says nothing at all about the building's date.
The register entry is narrow and exact: what stands on the national list here is the ordination hall of Wat Prasat, together with about two ngan thirty square wa of ground that the 1962 announcement says is itself to be treated as part of the monument. Not the monastery. Nine hundred and twenty square metres of Bang Krang, around one building. The Fine Arts Department signed the announcement on the last day of October that year and it was published a fortnight later, with a plan at 1:500 drawn by the department's own architecture division bound in behind it.
What the building is, the register does not say — registration in 1962 required no dating statement — but the Fine Arts Department's Archaeology Division classes it as an Ayutthaya-period monument, and in 2018 it surveyed the hall and made plans, structural drawings and a three-dimensional model of it, pairing it with Wat Chong Nonthri in Bangkok. None of that has been published. The fullest account is a Silpakorn University master's study of the ordination halls and viharas along the Khlong Om Non reach, which measures the hall at about 9.1 by 25.1 metres, three bays across and seven long, the five central bays walled and the end bays open porches with projecting mukh det front and back, and finds no evidence at all of who raised it.
It is a maha-ut hall: no windows in either long wall. The front wall takes the doors; the rear wall has only a small opening at the height of the principal image, which the study suggests was left to let daylight in behind the Buddha so that the figure appears to glow. It is the only maha-ut building among twenty-four surveyed in that whole reach of river. The base is a lion-form plinth banded with a lotus-bead moulding, the gable is carved wood with Narai riding Garuda inside coiled foliate scrollwork, and the central front portal is a five-spired mondop — one of only two such portals in the study area.
The same study names this hall as the place where the late-Ayutthaya line is at its clearest: the base sagging in the curve Thai calls the elephant belly or the junk hull, the ends of the line riding higher than the middle, the gable roof pinched narrow and its ridge sagging to answer the base. The Government Public Relations Department says the same thing in a sentence. Inside, tempera on all four walls — past Buddhas above, the life of the Buddha below, and a Jataka cycle whose identity the sources cannot agree on — painted in a predominantly red palette without true proportion, attributed to the first phase of late Ayutthaya and to the regional workshop known as the Nonthaburi school, the same hand tradition assigns to the walls at Wat Chomphuwek. The principal image, Luang Pho Yai, sits in meditation on an Ayutthaya-made pedestal and is described as U Thong in style, which is to say it is probably older than the hall around it.
A maha-ut ordination hall: no windows in either long wall, the doors all at the front, and one small opening in the rear wall at the height of the principal image, which the Silpakorn study reads as a way of letting daylight in behind the Buddha.
The late-Ayutthaya sagging line, which this building shows better than any other in the Khlong Om Non reach: the base curving down in the elephant-belly or junk-hull form, with the roof ridge sagging to match it.
The carved wooden gable, Narai riding Garuda set inside coiled foliate scrollwork, and a central front portal in the form of a five-spired mondop with the side portals in the banthalaeng form.
Tempera murals on all four walls — past Buddhas on the upper register and the life of the Buddha below, with a Jataka cycle whose identity the published sources give three different ways — in a predominantly red palette, attributed to the first phase of late Ayutthaya and to the Nonthaburi school.
Luang Pho Yai, the principal image, seated in meditation on a pedestal of Ayutthaya workmanship and described as U Thong in style: image and hall were most likely not made at the same time.
A pair of redented chedis standing in front of the hall inside the low precinct wall, in the corner of the monastery that adjoins the old canal.
A preaching chair of mid to late Ayutthaya date in the preaching hall, which the Department of Tourism says may be viewed for study on application to the monastery.
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 | Daily 08:00–18:00, per the Department of Tourism's Thailand Tourism Directory record for the monastery. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Not established from an official source. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Moo 4, Soi Wat Prasat, off Bang Kruai–Sai Noi Road in Bang Krang. Note that the road name is not the district: the monastery is in Mueang Nonthaburi, not in Bang Kruai, and the register says so. |
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.
No. It is in Bang Krang, Mueang Nonthaburi, and the 1962 registration announcement says so. The confusion comes from the access road, which is called Bang Kruai–Sai Noi Road — a road name, not a district.
Its completeness. A Silpakorn University study of the ordination halls and viharas along the Khlong Om Non reach names it as the most complete piece of late Ayutthaya architecture left in the Bangkok fringe, and points to the sagging base line and the answering sag of the roof ridge as the clearest surviving example of that manner.
One with no windows in the long walls, entered only from the front. It is the only such building among the twenty-four surveyed along this reach of river. Local legend reads the closed plan as a place to muster troops; the study that records the legend notes that unbroken wall is simply what a full mural scheme needs.
Probably not. The Department of Tourism describes the image as U Thong in style, standing on a pedestal of Ayutthaya workmanship, and draws the conclusion itself that the two were not made at the same time.
No — only the ordination hall, together with about 920 square metres of ground that the announcement says is itself to be treated as part of the monument. There is no Fine Arts Department record for the monastery as a whole.
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 Nonthaburi’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.