Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara, Gravesend

The Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara in Gravesend, Kent, is a purpose-built gurdwara funded entirely by the local Sikh community. Its own history says the first Sikhs arrived in Gravesend in the 1950s and most came in the 1960s.

The premises in order

• Until the late 1960s: services in a house on Edwin Street.
• Late 1960s to 2010: the Clarence Place Gurdwara, a former church, was the community's focus.
• Late 1990s: the gurdwara bought land off Saddington Street, next to its football field, Sports Centre and Education Centre. The site is 8.5 acres.
• November 2010: the new gurdwara opened. Its site gives the cost as 15 million pounds.

The building: the gurdwara's own site says the complex has three prayer halls and two langar halls, each langar hall with its own industrial kitchen, and calls it one of the largest outside India. The project was completed under the president, Jaspal Singh Dhesi. The gurdwara's own company, GNG Construction Ltd, did much of the work, and specialist firms in India supplied the detailed stonework and woodcarving. Further buildings on the site include a Punjabi school, a day centre for the elderly and a sports hall.

Why it matters: the history page calls it a landmark project that reflects the growing confidence of British Sikhs.

We could not open an outside source for the gurdwara's weekly attendance or for its charity work during the pandemic, so those are left out.