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Time has uncovered a long-forgotten, near 100-year-old student prank involving the Chapel clock at ����Ӱҵ

Under cover of darkness while undergraduate students in the 1930s, Geoffrey Hunter Baker (Modern Languages 1934) and an unnamed fellow undergraduate replaced the clock hands with cardboard copies. The two men took a hand each and kept them. 

“These worked very well until it rained,” reported Trixie Baker, Geoffrey’s daughter.

The College replaced the hands, and it appears the perpetrators of the prank were never known, until now, and the minute hand remains missing.

Trixie inherited the hour hand from her father upon his death in 1999. She returned it to the College on a visit in 2024 and it now resides in the College Archive, along with tales of other student ‘rags’. 

Caius engineering students were responsible for the Austin Seven van being placed on the roof of Senate House, the University of Cambridge’s ceremonial building, in 1958. And in 1921 Caius students secretly spirited away a six-ton German artillery piece from Jesus Close and displayed it in Caius Court.

College Archivist, James Cox, says: “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.”

If you have any information about the missing minute hand, please contact the College Archivist via the College website.

The following video is courtesy of ITV Anglia (broadcast April 3, 2025):