CLIMBING tall buildings and leaving mementoes on top was once a favourite pastime for Oxford students.

Bikes on the Bodleian Library’s 100ft pinnacle and numerous college roofs, dustbins above Queen’s College, and a naked woman’s dummy on top of Brasenose College.

These were just some of the high jinks undergraduates of yesteryear perpetrated and which we have featured in Memory Lane.

Now other ‘feats’ has been revealed, in letters John Kendall Thomas, known as Ken, a chemistry student at Balliol College, wrote to his parents from 1935 to 1940.

On May 9, 1937, dons awoke to find a Woolworth’s flag flying on the pinnacle of the Radcliffe Camera, 160ft from the ground.

Ken wrote: “Apparently, the climbers lassooed an ornament and so reached the balcony, then lassooed the projection on top of the dome.

“The authorities say an attempt to get the flag down is too dangerous, and it will stay there until the weather removes it. Imagine putting it there in the dark. The climb is regarded as Oxford’s ‘best yet’ and was amazingly daring.”

Bonfire Night was always a popular occasion for students. In 1937, they put fireworks on the roof of the Balliol Master’s lodgings, lit a long fuse and fled.

Ken wrote: “There were Roman candles, rockets, volcanoes, whizz-bangs and jumpers. I bet they woke the Master up – he sleeps just beneath where they were.”

Much to his family’s surprise, Ken admitted taking part in one enterprise - using his chemistry skills to help prepare fireworks for the 1938 Bonfire Night celebration on the college roof. They failed to go off first time, so a student climbed a drainpipe and relit the fuse. The verdict? “Everyone voted it a good show and nobody was caught.”

In one May Day prank, 10 students in groups of two reached the Balliol roof via the bedroom of a student named Higman – and he slept through it all. Ken commented: “It seems that the college is producing a set of first-class master burglars.”

Life in Oxford had other dangers, as Ken and a fellow student soon found out. A trip on a punt on the River Cherwell proved particularly hazardous. “Neither of us had punted before. We set off with paddles and pursued some remarkable courses, including turning completely round twice and hitting the bank three times.”

Ken enjoyed many cycle rides in Oxford and one winter, recalled skating on the Cherwell in North Oxford when the temperature dropped to 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit – 27.1 degrees of frost. But he spent a lot of time studying – he achieved a first-class degree in chemistry in July 1939. Ken’s memories of Oxford are included in The Balliol Years, a biography compiled by his son Brian.