Weliwita Sri Sanghikarama Tampita Viharaya

Weliwita Sri Sanghikaramaya's tampita image house stands on twenty granite stumps roughly two feet nine inches high, fourteen feet six inches long and nine feet wide, ringed by a two-foot-six-inch circumambulating path enclosed by a timber railing. The roof is flat clay tile in the Kandyan style, reached by wooden entrance steps. Beside it stands a Hevisi Mandapaya, a drumming pavilion on four brick pillars, later re-roofed in Calicut tile. The image house once carried Kandyan-style wall paintings, since damaged by unprofessional restoration work.

The temple was developed under King Keerthi Sri Rajasinghe (r. 1747–1781) and given to the Sangha rather than kept as a royal foundation — the source of the name Sanghikaramaya, monastery of the Sangha. It belongs to an 18th-century wave of temple building across the Thumpane region that raised preaching halls and tampita viharas in village after village. The hamlet here is named Sangharajapura, and the link is direct: Ven. Weliwita Sri Saranankara Thero, born nearby in 1698, frequented this temple as a young monk. He later led the restoration of higher ordination to Sri Lanka, receiving it himself in 1753 from a Siamese delegation, and King Keerthi Sri Rajasinghe made him Sangharaja — chief of the monastic order — and granted him this temple.