The old Limehouse Town Hall in London’s East End was opened at the weekend for a unique look at how the restoration is shaping up.

An old-fashioned parish bazaar staged by the Limehouse Town Hall Restoration Trust attracted 200 people on Saturday, with stalls run by Friends of the Earth, the East London Garden Society and others and a ‘make do and mend’ craft workshop run by Stitches in Time.

The 131-year-old building first opened as a parish vestry hall in 1881 before being taken over by the newly-formed Stepney borough council in 1900—but has fallen into disrepair since the 1980s.

It has had massive repairs and is undergoing an �130,000 restoration with help from English Heritage which the trust says was only caught “in the nick of time” before the roof would have caved in.