For hundreds of years, the West Country spa city of Bath has been a byword for elegance and sophistication.
In its Georgian heyday, immortalised in the classic works of Jane Austen, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Charles Dickens, the wealthy and fashionable flocked there to take the waters, view the spectacular remains of the Roman baths and, most of all, to see and be seen.
The burghers of Bath responded by building a spectacular urban landscape of honeyed local stone for them to promenade in.
Today, the beautiful Georgian streets and landmark buildings, including the Assembly Rooms, the Pump Rooms, Pulteney Bridge and the Royal Crescent, still make the city a tourist magnet, as well as a Unesco World Heritage Site.
But behind this civilised facade, street life has become feral – a world of rough-sleepers, graffiti, open drug-taking, alcoholism and rowdy stag and hen parties, whose participants seem keen to start boozing as soon as the pubs open.
