The hour hand of a university chapel clock that was taken in a student prank and replaced with a cardboard copy has been returned almost a century later.
Trixie Baker inherited the hour hand on the death of her father, Geoffrey Hunter Baker, a Cambridge graduate who died in 1999 aged 83.
Baker and an unnamed fellow undergraduate had taken the clock hands from Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge, under cover of darkness and replaced them with cardboard copies.
“These worked very well until it rained,” Trixie Baker said.
The college replaced the hands and it appears the perpetrators of the prank were not known until now. The pranksters took a hand each – the minute hand remains missing.
Trixie Baker returned the hour hand to Gonville & Caius, the fourth oldest college at Cambridge University, on a visit late last year.
The college archivist, James Cox, said: “I was delighted to welcome Trixie to the college and to receive the clock hand.”
It now resides in the college archive alongside other tales of student pranks – known as “rags”.
Cox said: “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.”
Trixie’s father started as a modern languages student at Gonville & Caius in 1934 and graduated in 1937, with the prank happening during this time.
Gonville & Caius was first founded as Gonville Hall by Edmund Gonville, rector of Terrington St Clement in Norfolk, in 1348. It was refounded in 1557 by John Caius as Gonville & Caius College.
In 1958, engineering students from the college were responsible for placing an Austin Seven van on the roof of Senate House, Cambridge University’s ceremonial building where graduation ceremonies take place.
In 1921, Gonville & Caius students removed a German artillery gun from a nearby square and displayed it in Caius Court.
