Beautiful temples in London (or anywhere really)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
out on my bike today & I thought of this thread. again I don't know if it compares to something really stunning like the Blue Mosque or what have you, but nonetheless.

St. Hilary, corner of Bryn Mawr & California in Albany Park, taken with a cell phone

thinking about borrowing a digital camera one of these Sundays and taking a tour of all these cathedrals. which I never would've done w/o this thread on places of worship, so big h/t to Rich for that.
 
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sufi

lala
I was enjoying these 2 sites over ramadhan:
http://mosques.muslimsinbritain.org/show-browse.php?town=London
&
http://30mosques.tumblr.com/
2 guys visit a different NY mosque each night thru the holy month

IMG_2297.jpg

empire states building lit up in green for eid
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Went to this place in Wimbledon yesterday, pretty fucking cool I thought. Weird how it's just tucked away in a back street amongst loads of posh gated houses. Very peaceful with no-one speaking and all the ducks in the pond asleep.

475389923_3a0efbabe7_o.jpg
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
St. Bartholemews Church in Brighton is amazing. Looks all fucked up weird and out of proportion, apparently that's because it's built to the supposed size of Noahs Ark. Looks lovely anyway...

Brighton.jpg

St_Barts_Inside_2003_JMD.jpg
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Well, however many years later I finally made it down to the Swaminarayan Mandir that started this thread. It's amazing inside too as Andrei said - millions of ornate carvings and guys lying down on their face. One chap doing a chanted prayer for a visitor, was very powerful when he was speaking foreign but when he went into English and it was all stuff like "make this man get a promotion at work" it detracted from it slightly.
Apparently they shipped almost five thousand tons of marble to India, got it carved there by more than a thousand master carvers and then shipped it back here and built it "like a jigsaw" to use their phrase. Amazing.
I think I'll check out the Jain one too although maybe it will take me years to get round to that as well.
 

Local Authority

bitch city
Went to this place in Wimbledon yesterday, pretty fucking cool I thought. Weird how it's just tucked away in a back street amongst loads of posh gated houses. Very peaceful with no-one speaking and all the ducks in the pond asleep.

475389923_3a0efbabe7_o.jpg

Was wondering if I would see this here, I used to study Thai here when I was 9-12, we would pray with the monks in the main temple for 2 hours every Sunday morning and I even enjoyed dinner with the monks in the house when I was even younger.

It's a great place to stroll around on a quiet Sunday, the lake and forest are beautiful.
 

Local Authority

bitch city
No one mention the Whitechapel Mosque? It isn't the most noteworthy of religious architecture tbh. You can hear the prayers along the Whitechapel high road though. If you listen during a hot summers evening, whilst looking east, it gives everything an eerie apocalyptic feeling.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
And yeah, it's pretty ugly, at least from the outside. Mate of mine got chased down the street by some guys leaving the mosque one Ramadam, pepped up on testosterone and God.
 
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