Bedroom in former Art Gallery

The art gallery in the west corridor was one of the many spaces repurposed to house refugees, then internees during the First World War. During the First World War Alexandra Palace was taken over by the Metropolitan Asylum Board to house refugees fleeing Belgium and the Netherlands. In 1915 it became an internment camp for 3,000 German, Austrian and Hungarian ‘enemy aliens’. The last internee left in 1919, however the Palace was not reopened until 1922.