NAGAPOOSHANI AMBAAL

TEMPLE

Vision

Our vision was to facilitate and promote religious and cultural activities amongst those displaced Tamils believing that it would help to alleviate their pains and distresses through engagement and participation in those activities.
Based on this vision, our main objectives included the following:
To promote and regulate Hindu religious activities, to establish and manage a place of worship, to enhance and promote Tamil language, culture, art, science, sports, youth activities and to facilitate welfares of Tamils in U.K, Sri Lanka and other countries

Temple Today

Now, as Trustees, we are proud to say that our Temple is actively continuing and passionately engaged in providing all the religious, cultural, educational and linguistic services as outlined in our visionary objectives. In addition, HTCA is also progressively working towards all the objectives related to aimed charitable causes in the UK and Tamil Homeland in Sri Lanka and receiving very positive and encouraging feedbacks from all the beneficiaries concerned.

Name of Temple & First Place of Worship

HTCA did choose the “Deity of the Shrine” for the place of worship to represent the one from Nainatheevu, a beautiful islet in the Northern part of Sri Lanka, popularly known as “Nagapooshani Ambaal”, a form of Goddess Shakti in Hindu worship philosophy.

We commenced our initial religious activities in latter part of 2002 by conducting prayers and worships with the presentation of a ‘pictorial image’ of the chosen Deity on every Friday at Malden hall in Victoria Road, Edmonton creating a holy environment for the Hindu Tamil Community. These activities expanded into major cultural and communal events and functions and had progressively enabled and empowered HTCA to bring in the Holy Statue of the chosen Deity, Nagapooshani Ambaal, from Tamil Nadu with the invaluable guidance of the Chief Priest.

Due to the exceptional rapid growth in popularity and support from the community in and around Enfield Borough, HTCA was driven to find our own property and premises to conduct and to continue our organisational tasks. In June 2003, we located a property with a building in 61-65 Church lane, Edmonton which was originally used as a ‘light-weight industrial Refrigerating Warehouse owned by Capital Refrigeration Services Ltd’ and the Trustees and the ‘Temple Thiruvizha Sponsors’ jointly funded its purchase and its refurbishing and restructuring to make it suitable to be used as a Place of worship, a Temple, with the Shrine of the chosen Deity.

Activities and Growth at Temple

Gradually the activities in this Temple building were extended to include, besides daily worship and prayer, educational support in linguistic, artistic and musical development for younger generation of Tamil and other communities which engaged, encouraged and empowered the younger minds and souls in morally and mentally elevated plane of high thoughts and social deeds. With these activities, the prayers, worshipping and gatherings and the spiritual power generated from the Deity and the associated Temple environment of peace and harmony continued to blossom and attracted people from all over United Kingdom including other communities with diversified cultural and religious backgrounds.

These development and growth were made possible only because of the devotion, tirelessness, full commitment, dedication and continuous efforts of the Trustees, Priests and Devotees who have given their time, money and life to this Temple. In addition, the spirituality of the Temple was further enhanced by the unique quality and capability of our ‘Chief Priest’ together with his knowledge and involvement in Tamil Language and Culture.

Charitable Activities of the Temple

The HTCA not only want to provide their services to the affected Tamils taken refuge here in Enfield but also wanted to extend their support to their affected brethren in Sri Lanka, especially those who are disabled, mentally affected, families without bread-winner, widows and orphaned children taken refuge in various ‘Homes’ in North and East of Sri Lanka by donating funds in partly financing their social, religious and educational needs and also helping in creating employment facilities.

The children homes in Sri Lanka which benefits from HTCA include, amongst others, Mahadeva Ashramama Children Home (Killinochchi), Senchcholai Children Care Home (Killinochchi), Anpu Children Home (Mulaitivu), Hari Children Home (Batticaloa) and Vivekanantha Girls Home (Valachchenai). We have also helped to build a residence for Anantha Illam Foundation (Vavuniya) and have been providing financial help to war torn families with widows and disabled people in need.

In addition, the Association also supports UK Charities, Sports and Educational Activities of local Schools and Countries affected by natural disasters.

The Trustees, devotees and worshipers have been participating in raising the funds to support these charitable activities.

A Replacement Traditional Temple Construction Project

Since the start of the Temple activities, the encouragement and enthusiasm from the trustees, worshipers and devotees had driven HTCA to build a Replacement Hindu Tamil traditional Temple and the project was carefully planned and developed by addressing and considering the existing environmental, health and safety issues and incorporating sustainability and innovative aspects.

As a first step, in February 2011, HTCA became registered as a Company and also as a ‘Charitable Institution’, appointing them as Directors/Trustees with the Company House and Charity Commission respectively in UK enabling them to proceed in constructing the Temple.

HTCA had defined a building project scope with architectural and structural specification based on the Anthropological and pre-historical ancient Indian Hindu Temple traditions, Tamil culture and their well rooted values few thousand years ago and it engaged community-based professionals with expertise, experience, knowledge, enthusiasm and inspirations to plan, design, engineering, construction and manage deliverables to build this Temple. HTCA also setup a funding management structure to administer the financial support given by the devotees, worshippers, well-wishers and by community-based commercial institutions.

The project team studied and followed the traditional Hindu Temple structures from South India and developed their design and detailing, adopting the concepts used by their ancestors who built several outstanding ancient Temples in India, Sri Lanka and South East Asian Regions. The investigations, surveys and assessments were also carried out geo-technically, structurally and architecturally by the project team to establish and develop the building elements for the Temple. The project team also took an innovative approach to create a traditional Temple to represent a bridging of an ancient Temple building tradition with the modern global building concepts and highly developed technology.

The planning permission was granted by the Enfield Borough Council on 28th April 2014 after our concerted and highly focused continuous efforts over a period of about three years. In parallel the project team with the support of the Trustees developed a mutual relationship with a specialist granite masonry and exporting contractor, Baba Stones, from a pre-historically ingrained in Tamil Nadu called Vadakadampadi of Mamallapuram, a little village very closer to the region of lost land of “Lemuria”. Also, the Trustees, Chief Priest, Devotees and Project Team Members visited Vadakadampadi on 25th January 2014 and attended traditional ceremonies and rituals in commencing the granite masonry work for this holy Temple.

Works in association with newly constructed Temple

The project program commenced with Bhoomi Pooja on 22nd June 2014, followed with a very enlightening ceremony called “Conch-Laying Ceremony” for the shrine of the new Temple. It continued with the construction of “Balasthapanam”, a young Temple within the Temple premises, to receive the eternal power and the bliss of the Deity from the existing Temple Shrine. Then the site works program commenced with the demolition of the existed building that followed by the substructure elements including piling, ground beams and underground services installations and moved on to super structure elements, steel work, block works etc.

Project Cost, Funding and Completion

The cost of the entire project was estimated at £2.2M and the Trustees sought funds firstly from the Devotees of ‘Nagapooshani Ambaal’ and then from community-based commercial institutions, Professionals and from HSBC Bank and the response received from them were amazing. The construction of the Temple was successfully completed in mid-2017 amidst all difficulties and challenges and was officially opened on 1st of June 2017. Consecration ceremony (“Maha Kumbabishekam”) of the Temple according to Hindu Rites and invoking the sanctification and blessings of ‘Nagapooshani Ambaal’ was a very special event and was held on 04th June 2017.

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