The secret of the greatest-ever student prank — in British history — has been revealed after 50 years:
At an anniversary dinner this month, ringleader Peter Davey revealed he had hatched the plan while staying in rooms at Gonville and Caius College overlooking the Senate House roof.He felt the expanse of roof ‘cried out’ to be made more interesting and decided a car would do the trick, recruiting 11 others to help realise his plan.
The group chose the May Bumps week, when any passers-by were likely to be drunken rowers celebrating after their races.
After finding a clapped-out Austin Seven, the group had to tow it through Cambridge to a parking space near Senate House but hit on the idea of sticking signs on it advertising a May ball to explain its presence.
Mr Davey, now 72, said a ground party manoeuvred the car into position while a lifting party on the Senate House roof hoisted it up using an A-shaped crane constructed from scaffolding poles and steel rope.
A third group, the bridge party, passed a plank across the notorious Senate House Leap – an 8ft gap between the roof and a turret window at Caius – and helped the lifters ferry across lifting gear comprising three types of rope, hooks and pulleys.
Policemen who heard a commotion as the equipment passed above them questioned some of the ground party but were distracted by careless drivers nearby and left them alone.
Three carousing rowers spotted the car swinging about 40ft up, despite the efforts of two girls on the ground team who had been recruited to hitch up their skirts a couple of inches to distract passers-by – a ploy more likely to work in 1958 than now. The rowers were fobbed off with the explanation that it was a tethered balloon.
The stunt almost went awry when the team tried to swing the car through the apex of the A-frame, over the Senate House balustrade and on to the roof.
They had failed to erect a rope check line running from the Caius side which would have steadied the vehicle. It crashed on to the roof from 5ft above it and, fearing they would be discovered, the lifting team hastily pushed it to the apex before grabbing their equipment and fleeing over the plank bridge.
The next day the bizarre sight enthralled crowds of onlookers as attempts by the authorities to construct a crane to hoist it back down failed.
Interestingly, in Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel, Gladiator — arguably the inspiration for Superman — the protagonist pulls off a similar prank, placing a cannon from his school quad on the roof of a nearby building — without using any equipment, of course.