There is a sad fate awaiting the Frog Hall if the campaign to save it fails. In 1994 the John Bull pub, was once a hubbub of music and conversation, and was reduced to an empty shell, its fixtures and fittings sold off.

Regulars at the pub, which was just down the road from the Frog Hall on Layerthorpe, were reduced to bidding for bits of the pub they thought was their own.

A vigorous fight was mounted to save the pub from demolition. The John Bull Action Group's petition was signed by 3,600 people, and York MP Hugh Bayley backed the campaign. But it was all to no avail. Campaigners had to throw in the towel when the legal costs mounted. The John Bull, the only York pub to have been in the Good Beer Guide for 11 years, was no more.

York CAMRA's Geoff Henman can reel off a list of other city pubs to have bitten the dust over the years, including the Crown and the Cromwell in Micklegate; the Kingston and Grapes in Toft Green; the Market Tavern in Coppergate; the Imperial in Kingsway North and the Londesborough in Petergate.

It is too late to do anything about them. But we can save the Frog Hall.

The Frog boasts the same sort of life and community spirit that made the John Bull special.

Everyone who cares about pubs and York should make their opposition to this desecration of our heritage clear. Our city needs thriving locals far more than it needs another video shop or burger bar.