It looked like the closing credits were about to roll for London's oldest picture house on Wednesday after a builder's propane lamp set fire to the former Court Cinema in Garratt Lane.

The workman had been mending a gutter on the roof at 10am, but the blaze went unnoticed for around five hours until passers-by saw billowing smoke at 2.30pm. Three fire engines and 20 firefighters were scrambled to save the relic of movie-going history in the heart of Wandsworth town.

Staff and drinkers in the adjoining Spread Eagle pub were evacuated for a short time as smoke seeped through, while police tried to regulate the traffic at the junction with Wandsworth High Street.

Commotion Sue Barber, assistant curator at the neighbouring Wandsworth Museum, spoke to the News as firefighters doused the flames.

She said: "We heard all the commotion, heard the sirens and a lot of banging. There is a lot of smoke."

Wandsworth station officer Paul Cartwright said fire crews spent around an hour putting out the fire, cutting holes in the wooden roof and using a thermal imaging camera to pinpoint the hotspots through the fug of smoke.

Originally known as the Biograph Theatre when it opened as the capital's first licensed cinema in 1908, the single-storey building was later dubbed the Picture Palladium and the Court Cinema.

Owned by Young's, it was used by the famous brewery for some years for bottle storage following its cinematic heyday, but it has lain empty since the company's 1998 plans to restore it as a cinema or music venue ran into trouble and were abandoned.

More than 80,000 was spent on repairing the building in the late 1990s to take it off the buildings at risk register and prepare for its rehabilitation, but Young's was faced with a fresh bill this week after the fire caused 10 per cent damage to the roof.

It may not have been The End for the old Biograph Theatre, but its future remains as uncertain as ever.