Kamphaeng Din: The City's "Earthen Ramparts"

Part of Ancient Chiang Mai

Visitors to Chiang Mai are swiftly aware of the moats and city walls that surround the Old City. First established by King Mangrai in 1296, and most recently restored in the 1990s, these remaining brick ramparts add considerably to the charm of the northern capital, and are as synonymous with the city as Wat Pra Singh and Doi Suthep. By contrast many fewer people, whether visitors or residents, are aware of Chiang Mai's outer city wall that snakes, largely unseen, hidden by houses and dense vegetation, through the city's southern and eastern suburbs.

Chiang Mai was captured by King Bayinnaung of Pegu in 1558, and remained under Burmese domination until 1776, when forces owing allegiance to King Taksin of Siam captured it. By this time the former Kingdom of Lan Na had become a shadow of its glorious past during the golden years of King Mangrai and Tilokarat, and Chiang Mai, exhausted and depopulated by decades of almost continuous warfare, was abandoned for 20 years. Only in 1787, in the 6th year of the reign of King Rama I, was a decision taken to resettle and revive the city as a bastion of Siamese power in the north. The task of re-establishment fell to Chao Kawila, the Lord of Lampang, who was established as Viceroy of the North in 1796, and immediately began the task of refortifying and resettling the city.

David Henley / CPA

Chiang Mai: House on top of Kamphaeng Din, Nantaram area.

Over the next four years, on the orders of Chao Kawila, Chiang Mai's city walls were restored and strengthened as a bulwark against the continuing attacks of the Burmese. By1800, the main walls and gates enclosing the old city had been rebuilt, and Kawila was able to turn his attention to the burgeoning southern and eastern suburbs, located between the Old City and the River Ping - an area which today includes Chang Moi, Thaphae, Loi Khroh and Sri Donchai to the east, as well as well as Rakaeng, Nantaram and Thiphanet to the south.

For the defence of these districts, an earthen rampart - in Thai, kamphaeng din - faced with brick and reinforced at its southwestern extremity with a curved brick bastion, was built southwards from Jaeng Ku Ruang, the Old City's Southwest Corner. Turning first to the east, and then northwards, these ramparts encompassed a broad sweep of land between the present Thiphanet and Chang Moi areas, before finally swinging northwest to rejoin the Old City wall at the Northeast, Sri Phum Corner. On the outer side of this wall, as an additional defence, local streams were redirected to form a moat; in the west, flowing south from the Old City moat, the waters of Huai Kaew, the "Crystal Stream", and in the east, flowing southward to meet them, the waters of the Khlong Mae Kha, or "Galingale Canal".

These outer defences, designed to protect commercial areas of the city rapidly being resettled with deportees from Tai-speaking areas further to the north such as Chiang Saen and Kengtung, were completed around 1800, and may have played an important role in defending the city against renewed Burmese attack in 1802. Whether the "Earthen Ramparts" were entirely new, or a restored version of an earlier wall, is not certain, though the latter seems likely. King Muang Kaeo (1495-1526), the 14th ruler of the Mangrai Dynasty, may have built an earlier defensive structure in this area during his reign (1495-1526). Similarly Pratu Khua Kom, the former "Small Bridge Gate" in the Wat Nantaram area of the ramparts, is reportedly mentioned in records dating from 1615, nearly two centuries before Kawila’s time. In either case, following Kawila’s restorations, the Burmese were never again to succeed in capturing Chiang Mai.

The Earthen Ramparts were pierced by at least four gates, none of which survive, except in name, at the present day. Running from west to east, these were Pratu Haiya, just south of the junction between Thiphanet and Wua Lai Roads; Pratu Khua Kom, where Suriyawong Road crosses the Khlong Mae Kha; Pratu Rakaeng, where Rakaeng Road crosses the same stream; and Pratu Thaphae Nok, the "Outer Thaphae Gate", in contradistinction to todays Pratu Thapae, which was once known as Pratu Thaphae Nai, or "Inner Thapae Gate". Pratu Thapae Nok straddled today's Thaphae Road by Wat Saen Fang, but no traces of the former structure remain. All four gates are represented on James McCarthy's Map of Chiang Mai published by the Royal Geographical Society, London, in 1891.

A fifth gate, Pratu Chang Moi, which once stood further to the north where Chang Moi Kao Road meets Sitthiwong Road by the Khlong Mae Kha, is not mentioned by name on McCarthy's map, but a plaque on Sitthiwong Road records its existence and the fact that it was torn down early in the 20th century.

David Henley / CPA

Chiang Mai: Jaeng Thiphanet, Kamphaeng Din - the city's fifth bastion.

During the course of the 19th century, the south-eastern suburbs enclosed by the Kamphaeng Din continued to flourish, eventually surpassing the walled section of the old city in terms of commercial importance. As a consequence, when the American traveller Holt S. Hallett visited Chiang Mai in 1890, the outer town where the markets were located was the busiest area.

"After passing through the gates", wrote Hallett, "we entered the market, which extends for more than half a mile to the gates of the Inner City, and beyond them for some distance towards the palace [subsequently razed to make way for the Yuppharat School]. On either side of the main road, little covered booths or stalls are set up; but most of the women spread a mat on the ground to sit upon, and placing their baskets by their side, expose their provisions on wicker work trays or freshly cut plantain leaves. It is a very pretty sight in the early morning to watch the women and girls from the neighbouring villages streaming over the bridge, their produce dangling from each end of a pole of bamboo over their shoulders, or accurately poised on their heads..."

Today Kawila's wall is very much the poor cousin of the extensively restored Old City fortifications, commemorated primarily in the name Thanon Kamphaeng Din, or "Road of the Earthen Ramparts", formerly a notorious and impoverished red light area, today increasingly prosperous. Here the old fortifications are most readily visible, where a few fading houses of ill repute still cluster beneath the earthen walls in the shadow of the new Mae Ping Hotel.

Yet for historians, or visitors who wish to explore another side of Chiang Mai, Kawila's wall is still there - often buried, it is true, beneath ramshackle shanty dwellings or concealed behind high temple walls and lush vegetation. Although less immediately impressive than the extensively rebuilt Old City walls, it is unadorned and more authentic.

Some of the best-preserved sections of the outer wall are to be found in the western extremities, winding through, behind, and even under residential sections of southern Chiang Mai. Here the accompanying moat stream, formed by the waters flowing out of the main city moats, are relatively clear and clean. They run southwards, in the shadow of the old Earthen Ramparts, from a small spirit house close by Suan Prung hospital towards Thiphanet Market. At this point a well-preserved brick fortification - in fact Chiang Mai's fifth and least-known bastion - rises above the houses, topped with a shrine to the local spirit guardian, Chao Pho Chumchon Thiphanet, the ancient brickwork held together by the massive roots of a venerable old tree.

Beyond this point, as the wall swings eastwards, is an area still known as Pratu Haiya. Little remains of this once southernmost point of entry to Chiang Mai's fortified section, but the observant pedestrian or driver on Tippanet Road will notice yet another shrine where the remains of the crumbling outer wall are pierced by 21st century tarmac.

From Pratu Haiya the old wall is somewhat easier to follow, as its course is traced by narrow tracks - often suitable only for walking - leading through a maze of poorer districts lying behind Wat Nantaram. Here the accompanying moat stream takes a turn for the worse, as it meets the polluted waters of the Khlong Mae Kha before running away southwards to join the River Ping. From this point the wall marches northwards beside the Khlong Mae Kha until the best-known stretch, at Thanon Kamphaeng Din, is reached.

By Thanon Kamphaeng Din substantial sections of the outer wall are clearly visible. Houses - some of them quite middle class - alternate with poorer dwellings, though the neighbourhood becomes obviously more affluent as it approaches the Night Bazaar.

Beyond Thanon Khamphaeng Din, really nothing of the Earthen Ramparts remain, though we know that, where they crossed Thaphae Road, was once the site of Pratu Thapae Nok, the Outer Thapae Gate. From this point, following the outer walls of Wat Saen Fang, they once curved northwest along Sitthiwong Road, along the west bank of the Khlong Mae Kha, to meet the Old City Wall by Wat Chai Sri Phum.

Text by Andrew Forbes, images by David Henley. © CPA Media, 2006