Appallagoda Ambalama

Appallagoda Ambalama is a stone-built travellers' shelter in the village of Appallagoda, Kandy District, part of the network of ambalama that once served travellers through the villages of Patha Hewaheta. It is described as the largest stone ambalama in the Kandy region: a floor area of about 80 square metres, rising 5.6 metres from floor to pinnacle, its roof carried on twelve outer and four inner stone columns. Inside, stone seating is built at different heights, said to reflect caste distinctions among those who rested there. A brass pinnacle tops the roof, and a stone pinthaliya, a traditional water container, stands at the front.

No written documentation of the building's history survives. According to local villager accounts, it was built in 1922 on the orders of the village arachchi, with the help of villagers, to house trade parties passing through. Two of the stone columns on the northeastern side are visibly broken or incomplete; villagers say this was done deliberately during construction, to ward off inauspicious omens. A further local story holds that four names carved into the internal columns belonged to men from southern Sri Lanka who had settled in Kandy, said locally to have used claimed magical powers to engrave their names into the stone.

None of this is confirmed by any written record. By local account, the building itself may simply be recent enough, as ambalama go, that no such record was ever made.