London Sri Murugan Temple

Established as a charity in 1975 by Tamil Hindus in East London, the London Sri Murugan Temple was first consecrated in a modest form in February 1984 in Manor Park, in the London Borough of Newham. As the surrounding Tamil community — including many Sri Lankan Tamil families who settled in East London from the 1980s onward — grew, the temple was substantially expanded in May 2005 with the addition of a 50-foot Dravidian-style royal tower (raja gopuram), giving it the visible South Indian temple architecture that distinguishes it on its residential East London street today.

The temple’s presiding deity is Murugan, worshipped here alongside his consorts Valli and Devasena, with numerous sub-shrines to other deities including Ganesha, Shiva, Durga, and Hanuman reflecting the broad devotional needs of its congregation. Its Dravidian-style marble sanctum rises roughly seven metres, and its annual Chariot (Ther) Festival each August — in which temple deities are processed through the surrounding streets — has become a significant yearly event for Newham’s Tamil Hindu community, filling a rare-deity gap (a dedicated Murugan shrine) in London’s otherwise Vaishnava- and Swaminarayan-dominated temple landscape.