Advertisers, eh? Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. After all, if you don't know you need something, how can you possibly be persuaded to buy it?

Back in the days before Facebook, Instagram and the arrival of social media 'influencers', of course, advertising was in some ways much more 'street'. Literally. Businesses with something to sell would plaster huge advertisements on billboards and hoardings hung on just about every available inch of wall space. Walk into a city like York and you would literally come face to face with them.

There's a certain nostalgic interest to be found in looking back on them these days. "Tetley Bittermen. You can't beat 'em," says one giant poster high up on the wall of a building on Bridge Street overlooking the Ouse, in a photograph from our archive dating from 1975. "Danish rashers and joints: There is no better baco-" says another (whoever put that one up did their client no favours by missing off the final 'n').

Some adverts, indeed, became so familiar that they ended up being part of our shared heritage: the bile beans advert on the corner of Monkgate and Lord Mayor's Walk is a case in point. It became so beloved that the York Civic Trust actually had it restored a few years ago.

At various points in York's history, however, the sheer number of posters and advertising hoardings became a bit of a scourge.

Back at the turn of the last century no controls existed, and as a result adverts and theatre bills were plastered on every available space - hoardings, end walls of buildings, fences, even beside the River Foss.

The great York conservationist Dr William Arthur Evelyn wrote regularly to the Yorkshire Evening Press and other organisations to complain: although there was a certain irony to his relentless hostility towards advertising hoardings, noted the late York historian Hugh Murray in his book Dr Evelyn's York. As well as a historian, campaigner and conservationist, Dr Evelyn was also a prolific public speaker - often for good causes. But how was he to let people know about his public lectures? "It is somewhat ironic," wrote Mr Murray, "to find that his lectures given in order to raise funds for St Stephen's Orphanage were prominently advertised in the very way he found so objectionable - by posters on hoardings and gable ends."

Advertising hoardings continued to plague (or adorn, depending on your point of view) the city for years.

In 1981, a fresh wave of advertising posters on the very Bridge Street building which had sported the 'Danish Baco-' advert in 1975 prompted a fresh campaign to get rid of them.

This time it was led by June Hargreaves, an assistant planning officer at York City Council who later went on to be awarded the MBE for her part in helping to establish the idea of conservation areas.

In May 1981, she promised that the council would write to the 'two advertisement companies which leased the space' and ask them to take them down. Presumably she did so. A photograph of the same building taken at the end of 1985 showed it without any hoardings - although the faint lettering of even earlier adverts that had been painted directly onto the brickwork could still be seen. The word 'Maps' can be made out, and 'The Oxford Books' and, on the other side of the building, 'Library... Best Service, Lowest Terms."

That building today is home to the Tank & Paddle bar. There's not an advertising poster to be seen on its neat brown brick exterior. In every other way it is unchanged from 1975. Which is lucky for us, in many ways. In 1985, a developer had wanted to pull down the Grade II listed building. It was in fact slated for demolition along with empty and derelict properties in Queen's Staith and Skeldergate - until city planners intervened and decided that it was 'not so far gone as to justify demolition'.

Stephen Lewis

Stephen Lewis