ADVERTS can be very annoying. Whether they’re interrupting your evening TV viewing, popping up on your mobile phone or even - dare we say it - intruding on your enjoyment of The Press, it can sometimes be hard to escape from them.

Old adverts, however, are for some reason very different. The products they’re selling often have names that, to us, seem wonderfully quaint and interesting, for a start - Gossage’s Dry Soap, anyone? Or how about Dunn’s Boots or ‘Ogden’s Tabs cigarettes, British Made by British Labour’.

They also offer a window onto the past - an insight into the things we were all frantically making, selling and buying years ago, as well as into the attitude of people in the past (we love that ‘British Made by British Labour’).

For the people of the day, however, they were no doubt every bit as annoying as today’s adverts are for us.

In fact, we know they were. Back at the turn of the last century (ie in the early 1900s) no controls existed at all on advertising hoardings in York, and as a result adverts and theatre bills were plastered on every available space in the city - walls and gable ends, fences, even beside the River Foss.

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The great York conservationist Dr William Arthur Evelyn got very annoyed about this, and wrote regularly to the Yorkshire Evening Press and other organisations to complain.

There was a certain irony to his campaigning, however. Dr Evelyn was a prolific public speaker - often for good causes. And he used to promote his talks by... advertising them on hoardings.

Many of the photos of old advertising hoardings in York that we have dug out today (all from the wonderful Explore York digital archive which you can find at images.exploreyork.org.uk/) date from 1909 - or even April 1909.

We wonder if they were taken as part of a campaign (perhaps by Dr Evelyn himself?) to record the scourge of advertising hoardings in York.

Whatever the reason why they were taken, they’re great fun to look at today. Enjoy...