In the south-west corner of Covent Garden market you can still just about see the name of one of its early inhabitants.

“Jas. Butler, Herbalist and Seedsman, Lavender Water, etc”

According to Geoffrey Fletcher’s “London at my Feet”, Mr Butler was “a mid-Victorian naturalist who supplied hedgehogs as pest control to London houses, to keep down beetles and cockroaches.”

This building, which clearly also sold the odd pancake to a passing tourist, is currently vacant and being re-furbished.