ISKCON Bhaktivedanta Manor

According to the temple's own history, the land at Aldenham was granted to Thomas Picot by the Abbot of Westminster in the 13th century, giving the estate its later name. A Georgian house was built in the early 1700s; it was demolished in 1884 and replaced by the larger mock-Tudor house that stands today. The house was renamed Piggott's Manor around 1923. It served as an RAF officers' mess and hospital during the Second World War, and from 1956 it was a nurse-training college for St Bartholomew's Hospital.

George Harrison had already supported ISKCON, for example by funding the printing of Prabhupada's book Krishna in 1970. In 1972 the devotee Dhananjaya Das identified the property, and Harrison was encouraged to buy it for the movement. The purchase was completed in February 1973; devotees moved in, the house was renamed Bhaktivedanta Manor, and the deities of Sri Sri Radha Gokulananda were installed that summer.

As attendance grew in the late 1970s, an agreement limited the Manor to six public events a year, and a long planning dispute with the local council followed. It was resolved in 1996, when the Secretary of State granted planning permission for an access road and continued religious use. More recently, the Sri Krishna Haveli, a 2,000-square-metre community building envisaged in Hertsmere's 2012 planning brief, was completed in 2020.

Architecture and sacred features

The main building is the mock-Tudor manor house of 1884, which has listed-building status. Part of the estate lies within a conservation area and in the Metropolitan Green Belt, which constrains new development. The temple room inside the house holds the deity altar. Newer additions include the Sri Krishna Haveli (completed 2020), farm and cow-care buildings, and landscaped gardens.