The UK’s binge-drinking problem can be traced back to Oxbridge students of the 17th century, new research has revealed.

Historians have previously assumed that excessive alcohol consumption was the reserve of the poor, but now the spotlight has been shone on the educated elite.

Dr Phil Withington, a History Fellow at Christ’s, has produced a study that focuses upon a new wave of wealthy young men going to university which peaked in the 1630s.

He discovered a pattern which is still familiar today: Oxbridge students, revelling in their first taste of freedom, set up decadent drinking clubs and bonded through drinking games.

Their revelries were characterised by raucous behaviour, with drunken banter eagerly encouraged.

Withington said: ''These classically-educated students emulated the carousing drinking camaraderie of Ancient Greek and Roman culture.

''They played Latin drinking games, invented initiations rites, and drinking became integral to male bonding and a social norm.

''Conversation and wit was an art from and those with the most banter were the most celebrated.

''Socialising became intrinsically linked with intoxication and drinking establishments and it became OK to be very, very drunk in public - attitudes we have inherited.''

The high number of students at Cambridge and Oxford in the 1630s – a figure not matched until almost 300 years later – made them a conspicuous presence.

Gentlemen’s clubs, ale-houses and taverns sprang up to serve the thirsty students, marking the start of the emergence of the British pub we know today.

So excessive was their drinking that wine consumption more than doubled in this period.

Prominent literary figures such as Thomas Shadwell and Ben Jonson wrote ballads and odes to intoxication, bringing a new sophistication to the alehouse.

Withington, an expert on the role of intoxicants in the early modern period, said the study was part of on-going research into Britain's obsession with drinking.

''Lots of the attitudes about drinking are very much a phenomenon of the early seventeenth century and this has been neglected up until now.

''Historians have believed that drunkenness was associated with the lower classes and viewed as vulgar by the affluent.

''However, evidence shows that it would have been beyond the means of the poor to buy huge amounts of alcohol.

''These educated young men made the first associations between drinking and 'having a good time' seen today.''