This Soho thoroughfare, which runs from Broadwick Street north to Oxford Street, isn’t directly named after Poland.

Instead its name comes from a tavern which once stood at the Oxford end of the street – the King of Poland, said to have been named in honour of King John III Sobieski who led a coalition of forces which defeated the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

Polish Protestants settled around the area in the 18th century, fleeing the Polish Counter-Reformation.

Famous residents have included Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (number 15; it’s marked with an English Heritage Blue Plaque) and William Blake (number 28).

The pub, incidentally, is said to have changed its name a couple of times – most latterly to the Dickens Wine House – before it was destroyed by a bomb in 1940.

Another pub in the street – the Kings Arms – stands on the site of an earlier tavern where the “Ancient Order of Druids” was revived in 1781.

The Poland Street Garage, meanwhile, opened here in 1934 and is said to have been the first multi-storey car park in London.