In praise of ... Wilton's music hall

Wilton's music hall
One of the grandest music hall of Victorian Britain ... Wilton's music hall
As the old stagers would put it, a funny thing happened to Wilton's music hall yesterday. There it was, an old wreck in the middle of London's East End going nowhere but downhill when - all of a sudden - it was named one of the 100 most endangered monuments in the world. Well, you could have knocked down its director, Frances Mayhew, with a wrecking ball. Wilton's is the only English item on the list, drawn up by the World Monument Fund (a kind of WWF for buildings).

One of the grandest music halls of Victorian Britain, it has fallen into a sorry state: 40% of it is boarded up; the roof is as punctured as an old tyre, and any serious bit of rain means flooding. Ms Mayhew is trying to raise funds to rebuild the 148-year old institution, and it has been a struggle. Then again, music halls were never popular with the establishment, being rowdy, bawdy places where the working classes drank, smoked and fought. All in the name of a cheap night out.

Two good Christian women entering Wilton's in 1884 found the environment so diabolical that, it is chronicled, "they fell down on their knees ... and in view of the stage and crowd of onlookers, prayed that God would break the power of the devil in the place". They were not alone in wanting change. Over the years there have been plans to replace the institution with a tower block, or a pub. Still it remains, down an alley even cabbies struggle to find: a monument to the seamy yet irrepressible spirit of Victorian working-class life.