The Social Decline of Bath

Under the rule of the eccentric Welsh gambler ‘Beau’ Nash, during the first half of the eighteenth century, Bath achieved an unrivalled eminence. The urbane routines and artistic achievements of the ‘Temple of elegant Pleasure’ have already received volumes of attention. But less has been written on the decay of the spa.

Its character changed, though imperceptibly at first, during the reign of George III, as the preserve of aristocratic fashion acquired popularity among the growing middle classes, who, by Jane Austen’s time, were well on the way to dominating the city.

According to Richard Warner, the cleric-historian of Bath, the decease of Nash in 1761 marked the beginning of disintegration: ‘From the moment of Beau Nash’s quitting the scene of his power and pride, those corruptions and relaxations (which first sap, and then crumble, the mightiest states) crept, insensibly, into his formal and elaborate system of public punctilio.’ As the century wore on, the effects of such relaxations provoked attempts to restore ‘the pristine lustre of those receptacles of the gay and the beautiful’.