100 years ago over 23,000 men moved into our small village. Help us to tell their, and our, story
The story of civilian internment in WW1
The Story of Knockaloe Internment Camp, what it was like to live there & the evidence today
The stories of internees, guards, and Manx people who were part of the internment story & finding your ancestor
Visitor Centre opening times, booking a private group or descendant visit, & renting the venue for your event
Share your family story with us by email info@knockaloe.im. To find out more about your family’s internee ancestor, contact us in advance of your visit.
Visitor Centre 2025 opening times can be found here.
Fri, 01 Mar 2024
Tue, 06 Feb 2024
Sat, 11 Nov 2023
Sat, 29 Jul 2023
100 years ago, on 17 November 1914, over 23,000 internees, such as Josef Pilates, together with their guards, including Archibald Knox, started moving into Knockaloe Farm, Patrick Village.
The Visitors Centre tells the story of what happened in our village 100 years ago to today’s visitors of all ages in a visual and imaginative way: through audio visual and still imagery, diaries and oral stories, with its wonderful collection of letters and artefacts and its 1:500 scale model of the camp.
The Centre is located at the entrance to the site of Knockaloe Camp, the world’s largest WW1 Internment Camp and centre of the UK Government’s aliens policy. A few features and remains of the Camp and its inhabitants can be seen in the village and on Knockaloe Farm, and from the Visitors Centre the self-guided walk uses an “app” to identify points of interest, including the remaining internee graves, and to pinpoint key features of the camp and hut locations, with a spot to sit and absorb the incredible stories from this area in the Garden of Barbed Wire.
The Centre was founded by a Registered Charity created within our community, which is bringing together records of Knockaloe Camp, and its satellite civilian WW1 Camps, and its residents and collating the lost stories of the internees, guards and village members, by reaching out to their descendants, collectors and archives around the globe, via the internet 100 years on, to try to understand the impact upon the real lives of those people and their families, and to tell their story. Anyone with any information about any aspect of Knockaloe and Patrick village life is encouraged to contribute to an ever-growing archive of this time, the people and the families involved. Bringing this information together allows descendants to find out more about what happened to family members, as well as allowing us to tell the story about this little-known aspect of the First World War.
Since launching on 17 November 2014, 100 years to the day after the first internees moved into Knockaloe, the Charity has received many more stories as well as various other information which is being collated into our Archive on a daily basis. Come and visit us to find out more. To share your family’s story, email info@knockaloe.im .
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Images used in the design of this website are part of the Knockaloe Charitable Trust Collection, or courtesy
of descendant collections, private collections, Manx National Heritage and the Mannin Collection, as noted