Item 7 - Note by Geoffrey Winthrop Young about The Roof-Climber's Guide to Trinity

1 sheet and one folded sheet (photocopy of typescript).

MS annotation at top of first sheet: 'note found in copy of GWY's Roof Climber's Guide to Trinity Feb. 1986'. Text records that this copy was given by Young to Prof. Norman Collie, 'scientist, artist and sometime President of the Alpine Club' on its appearance, returning to him after Collie' s death.

Written as a 'May week joke, to appear during the festival days at Cambridge at the end of the summer Term', along the lines of G. O. Trevelyan's Horace at Athens etc. Written 'from memory' when Young was studying at Jena; the MS was sent to his friend A. M. Mackay, who 'drew the illustrations but did not alter the text'. Mackay checked the routes with Young's brother Hilton, who was 'so fascinated by the traverse over the ivy-clad arch into St. John's that he crossed it three times, outward'; arousing suspicion from the porters by returning after midnight via the locked Trinity Gate; subsequent enquiries led to Hilton Young and Mackay being sent down for the Long Vac.

Comments on the history of climbing in college: Edward Bowen 'broke out of the turret stairs' onto Chapel, and Byron 'got on to the Library roof, and decorated the statues', but again Young found he had not climbed up but broken onto a staircase.

Young's own explorations were between 1895 and 1899, with companions including F. M. Levi, Young's 'close friend' Christopher Wordsworth, Cyril Clague, W. W. Greg, [J.] F. Dobson, A. Wedgwood, and G. M. Trevelyan. Further climbs were carried out in 1901 and 1902.

In the autumn of 1901, the Vice-Master W. Aldis Wright determined 'that the College must take cognisance of Roof-climbing, and decide whether or not it should be made illegal'; two junior Fellows, G. M. Trevelyan and Gilbert Walker, were appointed to report on the matter, with power to co-opt Young as a non-resident member of committee; they 'did the climbs and circuits in full daylight, with two of our former enemies, the College Porters, carrying the fire-ropes behind us through the Courts, in procession! As a result of the official Report, the practice was made (officially) illegal'.

Comments on Roof-Climber's Guide to St John's, by 'two "Blues"', including Hartley, and the second edition of the Roof-Climber's Guide to Trinity which appeared in the 1930s

Young's copy of The Roof-Climber's Guide to Trinity is now at Adv.c.25.71.