Sir – I love walking past that old Victorian building at the corner of Walton Street and Little Clarendon Street and seeing the 2/6 tea on offer (Report, February 4).

However, it does seem that for several years no one has been able to find a long-term use for it, and it is too big just to serve as a backdrop for some fancy artwork.

Given that there is always pressure for accommodation in Oxford and that many of us want to protect the green spaces, I’m afraid that we have no alternative but to recycle our brown-field sites, of which this is one. The good of having a great-but-not-that-great building must surely give way to the greater good of a building with a purpose.

I think it’s up to those who want to save the old grocery block to come forward with an imaginative plan for its repurposing — and the money to match.

Otherwise (sad as it may be) the building will have to go and the tea and coffee signs carted off to a museum. But beware of adding new shops — they could end up being boarded up as well!

Don Manley, Oxford