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Original Text (Annotation: EPW011413 / 504909)
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This building is the West Africa Cafe, one of the many cafes run by J.Lyons who held the main catering franchise for the British Empire Exhibition in 1924. As the exhibition that year attracted around 17 million visitors, that was a lot of cups of tea!
This particular cafe was situated within the "Walled City", which housed the exhibits from three West African nations, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), Nigeria and Sierra Leone, as well as more than sixty craftsmen who had come from those countries for the exhibition, and lived in the native village (see separate pin note). The picture attached shows the city's 1924 inhabitants, and comes from an album donated to Wembley History Society in 1964 by Mr D.M.H. Beck, who was the resident superintendent of the Nigerian Native Village, and was the Englishman seated on the left of the picture. The album is now held at Brent Archives. '
