It’s about time… chapel clock hand taken in 1930s student prank is returned to Gonville & Caius College

All things come to those who wait… and that can be quite a wait. But after almost 100 years, the hour hand of a university college chapel clock taken in a student prank and replaced with a cardboard copy has been returned.

Trixie Baker inherited the hour hand after the death of her father, Gonville & Caius College graduate Geoffrey Hunter Baker, in 1999, aged 83.

He and an unnamed fellow undergraduate made off with the clock hands under cover of darkness, kept one each and replaced them with cardboard copies.

“These worked very well until it rained,” Ms Baker said.

It appears the prank perpetrators were not known until now – and the minute hand is still missing.

Mr Baker started as a modern languages student at the college in 1934 and graduated in 1937, and the prank happening during this period.

His daughter returned the hour hand to Gonville & Caius during a visit late last year. It is now in the college archive alongside other tales of student pranks – known as ‘rags’.

College archivist James Cox said: “I was delighted to welcome Trixie to the college and to receive the clock hand.

“Learning of student escapades is part of the college’s long and varied history. While we don’t encourage students to take part in such pranks, I am happy to learn about them years later, when no-one has been hurt and no permanent damage has been done – and they’ve graduated!”

Gonville & Caius, the fourth oldest college in the University of Cambridge, was first established in 1348 as Gonville Hall by Edmund Gonville, Rector of Terrington St Clement in Norfolk. It was re-founded in 1557 by John Caius as Gonville & Caius College.

Engineering students from the college hit the headlines in 1958 when they were responsible for placing an Austin Seven van on the roof of Senate House, the university’s ceremonial building.

And in 1921, Gonville & Caius students secretly spirited away a six-ton German artillery gun from Jesus Close and displayed it in Caius Court.

Anyone with information about the missing minute hand is asked to contact the college archivist via the college website at cai.cam.ac.uk/.