An Austin Seven on the Senate House roof

JUN 08 1958

Cambridge woke to find a battered Austin Seven van perched on the apex of the Senate House roof. About a dozen engineering students from Gonville & Caius had towed the derelict from Harston, stripped its engine and rear axle to lighten it, and winched it up overnight with a derrick and steel rope borrowed from the gliding club, using a plank bridge across the Senate House Leap. After five days the police, fire brigade and Civil Defence gave up and cut the van into six pieces with oxy-acetylene torches to lower it. The perpetrators stayed anonymous until a fiftieth-anniversary reunion in 2008.