The Hampshire man known as the Naked Rambler has lost his case at the European Court of Human Rights where he claimed he had a right to be naked in public.

Former marine Stephen Gough, from Eastleigh, had alleged that his repeated arrest, prosecution, conviction and imprisonment for being naked in public and his treatment in detention violated his rights.

The court unanimously found there had been no violation of Articles 8 and 10 of the Convention.

Gough, 54, has walked naked throughout the United Kingdom, from John O'Groats to Land's End, and is a well-known campaigner for his right to appear nude in public - even though his actions have often landed him in prison.

He spent total of five years and three months in detention from May 2006 to July 2011 when his arrest for breaching the peace sparked the current case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.

He was approached by two police officers on Manson Terrace, a public road leading from HMP Perth to Edinburgh Road, and their suggestion that he put on some clothes fell on deaf ears.

He appeared naked in court as he pleaded not guilty to breaching the peace and rejected the sheriff's warnings that he would be held in contempt if he did not put some clothes on.

The sheriff found that Gough's conduct on July 20 2011 was severe enough to cause alarm to ordinary people, threatened serious disturbance to the community, and presented as genuinely alarming, in its context, to any reasonable person.

Gough was sentenced to 330 days for the breach of the peace and 90 days for the contempt charge, together with 237 days unspent from a previous sentence, a total of 657 days.

The sentences were not backdated and they were to run consecutively. It meant the total length of the sentence was one year, nine months and 18 days.

The ECHR ruled today: ''The applicant's imprisonment is the consequence of his repeated violation of the criminal law in full knowledge of the consequences, through conduct which he knew full well not only goes against the standards of accepted public behaviour in any modern democratic society but also is liable to be alarming and morally and otherwise offensive to other, unwarned members of the public going about their ordinary business.''

The court described Gough's case as ''troubling'' but ruled that ''relevant and sufficient'' measures had been taken against him by the police and legal authorities which saw him arrested in 2011. They were meeting a ''pressing social need in response to repeated anti-social conduct'' by Gough.

The ECHR stated: ''Even though, cumulatively, the penalties imposed on the applicant undoubtedly did entail serious consequences for him, the court cannot find in the circumstances of his case, having regard in particular to his own responsibility for his plight, that the public authorities in Scotland unjustifiably interfered with his exercise of freedom of expression. Accordingly, no violation of Article 10 of the Convention has been established.''