Permit old wall alteration (5)
I believe the answer is:
allow
'permit' is the definition.
(I know that permit can be written as allow)
'old wall alteration' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'old' could be 'o' (common abbreviation eg in OE for Old English) and 'o' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'wall' is 'allw' which is present in the remaining letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for allow that I've seen before include "Permit, consent to" , "Permit or agree" , "Permit or acknowledge" , "praise no more" , "Licence" .)