Fire-hit Leicester Hindu temple in Midland Bank move plan

Members of a Hindu temple in Leicester which was badly damaged in a fire are hoping to move into a Grade-II* listed building in the city.

A third of the Hare Krishna temple on Thoresby Street was damaged in a gas explosion in September 2010.

The blast happened after one of the biggest festivals in the Hindu calendar. No-one was seriously injured.

A planning application has now been submitted for the old Midland Bank building on Granby Street.

Pradyumna Das, from International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), said English Heritage, conservationists and planners were “not adverse to it becoming a place of spirituality and community”.

“If you didn’t know it was a bank, you’d probably think it was a place of worship of some sort, primarily because of the way it’s constructed – the elegance and grandeur of it.”

He said their “vision” for the building would be to convert it into a “multi-purpose centre”.

“Not only in the Hare Krishna context, but to have a restaurant to promote healthy eating and vegetarianism, yoga, mediation classes on a regular basis, different seminars on self-development and education and so on.”

The temple was left unusable by the blast and has had to hold events and weekly congregations around the city for the past year.