280 years before Disney

I look out of the window at the thousands of tourists wandering around the streets in groups, and wonder what it would be like to see my home town with fresh eyes again.

Thinking back, the first thing that most struck me about Bath was not the architecture, but the internal  details of the architecture. I had spend all of my life to date around casement windows and curtains, so to be confronted with sash windows and fitted shutters was completely new to me. The ornate bronze catches between the upper and lower sashes were intriguing.

Then there was the height of the ceilings. The most inexpensive flats or bed-sits had ceilings with ornate plaster cornices and central stucco roses, so high that you needed a ladder to change a light bulb. Most of the buildings in Bath were made to be rented out to wealthy families in 'the season', and the speculators wanted to keep their customers by making the dwellings as opulent as tastefully possible. They had to mirror the grander interiors of the Pump Room and Assembly Rooms, where fashion and the display of grandeur encouraged the would-be grand and fashionable to spend as much money on gambling and balls as possible.

Today's tourists don't very often get the opportunity to go into houses built for seasonal renting to visiting families unless they have been converted into small hotels, but if they did they would quickly notice the dissociation between the external and the internal. The houses are all a front.

The Georgian architect's prime consideration was how their terrace would look from the street, and you get the impression that what lay behind the facade was almost an afterthought.

The neo-classical elevations which have rows of symmetrical windows on three or four levels seem to have been stuck on the front of the other four sides. In most cases, they were just stuck on. If you want to completely rebuild a Georgian townhouse but leave the facade untouched, you simply shore it up on both sides, then demolish the rest. It has been done.

On many buildings here, it is common to see the main staircase just behind one of the front windows, running diagonally across it. Look a little deeper and this is visually quite disturbing.

Many 17th century buildings were 'Georgianised' in the early 18th century by having a facade stuck onto the old, original one, giving the front wall a thickness about 24 inches, rather than the usual 6. The interiors remain 17th century.

The fashionable would promenade along showcase streets showing their best faces to the world, just as the actual promenades did. Bath is all a sham, like a 250 year-old Disney World.