Wat Makham

What the official record says

Where Wat Makham 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.

One date on this monastery is not tradition at all but administration, and it is firm: the same register records that the three monasteries called Wat Makham — nai, nok and nuea — were amalgamated into one and the qualifier dropped in B.E. 2482, since when the surviving monastery has simply been Wat Makham.

The history of Wat Makham

Wat Makham stands on the Chao Phraya at Ban Klang, a little above the provincial town, and it is one of the few monasteries in this province that people regularly call by two names. ONEP's cultural-environment register lists it as Wat Makham or Wat San Chao — the shrine temple — because of the Chinese shrine hall that stands on its river frontage. It is a monastery of the Mon riverside, and the register attributes its building to the hands of a Mon village community rather than to a patron.

The foundation account is careful to mark itself as an assumption, and this page keeps that marking. ONEP writes that the monastery is supposed to have been raised in the Ayutthaya period, around B.E. 2170, and offers two readings of the name with the same hedge: either tamarind trees once grew here in numbers, or the name was carried over from a village in the Mon country. Neither is documented, and a register that says so plainly is more useful than one that does not.

What is documented is the amalgamation, and it explains the confusion that surrounds this monastery. There were three Wat Makham. New foundations produced Wat Makham Nok and Wat Makham Nuea, and the original became Wat Makham Nai. The original then fell into disuse; its monuments decayed and there was no means to restore them. So the three were merged into a single monastery, the directional qualifier was dropped, and from B.E. 2482 the surviving monastery has been plain Wat Makham. Anyone reading an older document about a Wat Makham in this province has to work out which of the three it means.

The Chinese shrine on the water is not an afterthought. ONEP records the resident deity as Chao Pho Wat San Chao, enshrined in a three-storey Chinese-manner hall standing at the river's edge. A Mon-built monastery on a trading reach with a Chinese shrine on its landing is an accurate picture of what this stretch of the Chao Phraya has actually been for three centuries, and it is worth noticing that the monastery is known locally by the shrine rather than by the tamarinds.

What you actually see

The three-storey Chinese-manner shrine hall at the water's edge, housing Chao Pho Wat San Chao, which gives the monastery its alternative name.

The river frontage itself at Ban Klang, on the reach above the provincial town where the Mon settlements ran.

The monastery compound as the survivor of an amalgamation — the site that absorbed Wat Makham Nai and Wat Makham Nok when the three were merged in B.E. 2482.

The Fine Arts Department's registered boundary, which marks this as one of only ten monuments in the whole province registered with a determined land boundary.

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 founding date, which ONEP gives as an assumption in its own words and which no instrument supports.
• Which of the three Wat Makham the registration covers, and whether any fabric of Wat Makham Nai survives inside the present compound.
• The origin of the name — tamarind trees or a Mon village name — which the register offers as alternatives without deciding.
• The gazette instrument behind the registration, unread this run because the departmental endpoint that carries it is POST-only.
• The age and history of the Chinese shrine hall, which no state source read here dates.

Wat Makham: 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 Pathum Thani’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.