WAT TAWET

Footnotes:

(1) Ban Samphao Lom was situated near the Chao Phraya River in the Samphao Lom Sub-district. The village is on the Monthon Krung Kao map (1916 CE). John Bowring (1857, London, John W. Parker and Son, West Strand), in his book ‘The Kingdom and People of Siam’, wrote: "Between the modern and the ancient capital, Bangkok and Ayuthia, is a village called the “Sunken Ship,” the houses being erected round a mast which towers above the surface at low water."

(2) Khu Cham, or the Cham Ditch, is an existent canal situated off the city island in the southern area of Ayutthaya, running through the Samphao Lom and Khlong Takhian sub-districts. The canal splits off from the present Chao Phraya River about 500 meters east of Wat Phutthaisawan and runs south to join Khlong Takhian, nearly at the latter’s confluence with the Chao Phraya River.

(3) The Ayutthaya monasteries were sacked and plundered by the Burmese and further dismantled after the fall of Ayutthaya to reconstruct the Siamese capital in Bangkok. Most parts of the wall and the forts were dismantled in the reign of King Rama I (1782 - 1809 CE), who had the bricks taken to be used in constructing the city walls for the new capital in Bangkok. In 1784 CE bricks from the ruins of Ayutthaya were used to build a barrage in the Lat Pho Canal at Phra Pradaeng to halt the intrusion of saline water farther inland. Another round of collecting building material occurred in the reign of King Rama III (1824 - 1851 CE) when remaining bricks and laterite stones including those of the Thamnop Ro causeway and the Elephant Bridge, were sent down to Bangkok to be used in the construction of a giant stupa, a copy of Ayutthaya's Chedi Phukhao Thong, called Wat Saket which collapsed into rubble. Ayutthaya's temple bricks were also used to strengthen the bed of the Bangkok - Ayutthaya - Lopburi railway track at the end of the 19th century. When, in the last century, the demand for antiques increased, and the amulet markets mushroomed, Ayutthaya's ruins were plundered one more time. During the fifties and early sixties, witnesses recount, it was common for locals in the Ayutthaya area to collect the bricks of the ruins. The bricks were locally used to help expand other temple sites but were mostly sold to contractors and shipped on a large scale as there was a demand from Bangkok. Trucks and boats from Bangkok collected the bricks at 20 Baht a load.