Beds laid out in the Great Hall

Beds laid out for refugees in the early stages of 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.