The Night Climbers of Oxford is a secret society, dedicated to nocturnally scaling college and town buildings in Oxford, England. The society is noted for its political activism, controversial acts, feats of climbing and parkour, as well as urban exploration. The society was likely inspired by their Cambridge counterparts, The Night Climbers of Cambridge. Activities conducted by the society are forbidden by the University authorities, meaning that acts are completed under the cover of darkness, to avoid detection.
An image taken from the ‘Night Climbers’ Facebook page depicting an Oxford Night Climber, standing on the ‘Stepping Stones’. A frequently visited Night Climbing route in Cambridge.
History
The founding date of the Night Climbing society remains unknown, although acts of nocturnal climbing in Oxford are reported to date back to the 1930s, with members of the Alpine Club and Oxford University Mountaineering Club being some of the first to venture on to the University rooftops. The historian and climber David Cox, is widely regarded as one of the first night climbers to have scaled the Radcliffe Camera and the Codrington Library, during the early 1930s. Upon his second ascent of the Radcliffe Camera, he was accompanied by fellow climber Nully Kretschmer.[1] As an undergraduate, Cox stole the weather vane from the Christopher Wren Sundial, located in All Souls College. Upon being elected a fellow, he climbed back up and replaced it, with its absence unnoticed.[2]Tom Tower located at Christ Church, Oxford is also reported to have first been scaled in the 1940s by undergraduate students.
David Cox, British mountaineer and Night Climber.
Hamish Nicol, a mountaineer, participated in acts of night climbing. After completing his National Service from 1947-49 when he was commissioned in the Royal Artillery, he attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he switched from Geology to Medicine. During his studies in Oxford, Nicol placed a white bow tie on top of the Radcliffe Camera to celebrate the Coronation of Elizabeth II.[3]
Despite Oxford hosting similar architecture to that of Cambridge, night climbing activities remained sporadic in nature throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This was likely due to the combination of Oxford University Mountaineering Club senior members and Presidents, discouraging acts of night climbing. Additionally the brick work within Oxford is supposedly renowned for its fragile and soft nature, making climbs on listed or College buildings dangerous. For these reasons, no formal society dedicated to Night Climbing is thought to have gained any traction or structure during the late 20th century.
Whilst an undergraduate at St Catherine's College from 2005 - 2008, Katherine Rundell developed an interest in night climbing and began to explore the rooftops, inspired by the 1937 book The Night Climbers of Cambridge according to her diary.[4] Rundell would later publish the book Rooftoppers, which followed the adventures of Sophie, a girl orphaned in a shipwreck on her first birthday. Sophie later attempts to find her mother, who she is convinced survived the disaster, whilst also taking to the rooftops of Paris in order to thwart officials trying to send her to a British orphanage.[5]
The early 21st Century has seen an increase in the number of night-climbing activities based in Oxford. From 2016 to 2020, a group of nocturnal climbers began posting images to anonymous confession Facebook pages such as Oxfess, detailing climbs conducted at The Radcliffe Camera, Christ Church, Corpus Christi College, Pembroke College, Westgate, Cornmarket Street, and several other high-profile locations. Each public post contained content of a political or philosophical nature, with advice given sometimes in the form of an 'agony aunt'. The local media dubbed the group "The Night Climbers of Oxford", for their identities remained unknown. Despite some backlash, the public showed support for the group and their controversial acts. As a result they quickly became part of Oxford's urban and night-life culture. The modern incarnation is thought to be a mixed gender society, unlike their Cambridge counterparts. It is not exclusive to members of Oxford University, and consists of those who are physically talented in sports such as Rock Climbing and Parkour.
Political activism
Traffic Cones decorated with student memorabilia and LGBT Movement Rainbow Flags, located on the exterior of the Radcliffe Camera
During May 2018, traffic cones began to litter the exterior walls of the Radcliffe Camera. The Night Climbers of Oxford claimed responsibility through anonymous Oxfess Facebook submissions. The Traffic Cones were detailed with humorous content, supposedly designed to put students in a 'light-hearted' frame of mind. During Oxford's pride week the traffic cones were decorated with Rainbow flags, showing the secret society's clear support for the movement. Other key political issues that are often pursued by the Night Climbers is that of inequality, elitism, and the homeless epidemic in Oxford.[6]
Trespassing and controversy
In April 2017, Merton Street was shut and fire tenders were called after several Corpus Christi College students climbed onto the roof, following a 'Bop'. All but one of the students escaped from the porters, while one had to be rescued by the fire service. Eyewitness reports indicate the students crawled along a first-floor gutter in order to reach the slate roof of the main Quad. It is unclear how the students reached the gutter, but they were quickly spotted by porters and a Junior Dean.
Upon speaking with the Cherwell student newspaper, David Bray, Fire Protection and Business Safety Manager for Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, released a statement saying: "They had placed themselves at great danger, considering that they were over four storeys above street level, and the slightest slip may have had disastrous consequences, which could have, at best, involved life-changing injuries."
In an email to JCR members, seen by Cherwell, the Dean of Corpus Christi, Dr David Russell, described climbing on college buildings as “extraordinarily dangerous”, noting the “seriousness” of the ban on climbing and concluding that the ground was "unforgiving.”[7]
In January 2017, Christ Church students were issued with a safety warning after roof alarms were triggered by a night- climbing incident. The Night Climbers of Oxford confirmed to the Cherwell student newspaper, that two of their members had scaled Christ Church within the same time frame, coinciding with the incident. Professor Geraldine Johnson, the college’s junior censor, warned students to “make sure you don’t let anyone use your windows to access either the scaffolding or roof areas of the College.” The Night Climbers informed Cherwell that Christ Church was the easiest college to "both climb and infiltrate", due to the many obscure entrances on the grounds.
College authorities expressed their concerns, highlighting the dangers of climbing on college buildings, despite not condemning the act of night climbing itself.[8]
Popular culture
The Oxford Roof Climber's Rebellion, by Stephen Massicotte and R. H. Thomson
In more recent years, guides, books, plays and films have depicted the night-climbing/roof-climbing culture within Oxford. They are as follows:
In 2007, Stephen Massicotte and R. H. Thomson printed the book The Oxford Roof Climber's Rebellion. This book inventively expands on the friendship between T. E. Lawrence and Robert Graves, suffering from the aftermath of World War I and foreseeing the dawning of new ones. This prompts the Oxford Night Climbers to lay siege to the university and town buildings, placing an Arabian flag on a roof at Oxford. The film was later converted into a theatrical production, produced by the Urban Stages company.[9]
In 2014, The Riot Club depicts students scaling the town buildings surrounding the High Street. Directed by Lone Scherfig and written by Laura Wade, the film is set amongst the privileged elite of Oxford University, following the story of Miles (Max Irons) and Alistair (Sam Claflin), two first-year students determined to join the infamous Riot Club. The Riot Club is described as a veiled version of the real-life Bullingdon Club.
The Radcliffe Camera is a building of the University of Oxford, England, designed by James Gibbs in a Baroque style and built in 1737–49 to house the Radcliffe Science Library. It is sited to the south of the Old Bodleian, north of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, and between Brasenose College to the west and All Souls College to the east. The Radcliffe Camera's circularity, its position in the heart of Oxford, and its separation from other buildings make it the focal point of the University of Oxford, and as such it is almost always included in shorthand visual representations of the university. The Radcliffe Camera is not open to the public.
Corpus Christi College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1517, it is the 12th oldest college in Oxford.
Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to support it. An important feature of de Merton's foundation was that this "college" was to be self-governing and the endowments were directly vested in the Warden and Fellows.
Lincoln College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, situated on Turl Street in central Oxford. Lincoln was founded in 1427 by Richard Fleming, the then bishop of Lincoln.
University College, formally The Master and Fellows of the College of the Great Hall of the University commonly called University College in the University of Oxford and colloquially referred to as "Univ", is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It has a claim to being the oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1249 by William of Durham.
Corpus Christi College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th century to the early 19th century it was also commonly known as St Benet's College.
Buildering describes the act of climbing on the outside of buildings and other artificial structures. The word "buildering", sometimes misspelled bildering, combines the word building with the climbing term bouldering. If done without ropes or protection far off the ground, buildering is extremely dangerous. It is often practiced outside legal bounds, and is thus practiced mostly at night.
The University of Oxford has thirty-nine colleges, and four permanent private halls (PPHs) of religious foundation. Colleges and PPHs are autonomous self-governing corporations within the university. These colleges are not only houses of residence, but have substantial responsibility for teaching undergraduate students. Generally tutorials and classes are the responsibility of colleges, while lectures, examinations, laboratories, and the central library are run by the university. Students normally have most of their tutorials in their own college, but often have a couple of modules taught at other colleges or even at faculties and departments. Most colleges take both graduates and undergraduates, but several are for graduates only.
The Night Climbers of Cambridge is a book, written under the pseudonym "Whipplesnaith", about nocturnal climbing on the colleges and town buildings of Cambridge, England, in the 1930s. The book remains popular among Cambridge University students and the 1930s and 1950s editions can be hard to find. It is often credited with popularising and inspiring the first generation of urban explorers and night climbers.
Christ Church Meadow is a flood-meadow and popular walking and picnic spot in Oxford, England.
The Oxford University Mountaineering Club (OUMC) was founded in 1909 by Arnold Lunn, then a Balliol undergraduate; he did not earn a degree.
The White's Chair of Moral Philosophy was endowed in 1621 by Thomas White, Canon of Christ Church as the oldest professorial post in philosophy at the University of Oxford.
Magpie Lane is a narrow historic lane in central Oxford, England. It leads south from the High Street where it is at its narrowest, now completely pedestrianised as a pavement, and north from the cobbled Merton Street.
In architecture, a quadrangle is a space or a courtyard, usually rectangular in plan, the sides of which are entirely or mainly occupied by parts of a large building. The word is probably most closely associated with college or university campus architecture, but quadrangles are also found in other buildings such as palaces. Most quadrangles are open-air, though a few have been roofed over, to provide additional space for social meeting areas or coffee shops for students.
Night climbing is a term used, principally at the Oxford and Cambridge universities in England, to describe the sport of climbing up the walls of colleges and public buildings, and exploring the rooftops. This activity is frowned on by college authorities, so it is mainly done under cover of darkness, to avoid detection.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city, university and colleges of Oxford, England.
Katherine Rundell is an English author and academic. She is the author of Impossible Creatures, named Waterstones Book of the Year for 2023. She is also the author of Rooftoppers, which in 2015 won both the overall Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, and was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal. She is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and has appeared as an expert guest on BBC Radio 4 programmes including Start the Week, Poetry Please, Seriously.... and Private Passions.
References
↑ Templeman, G. (1995). David Cox Obituary. The Climbers' Club Journal, 122, pp.325-346.
↑ Rundell, Katherine (2015). London Review of Books - Katherine Rundell's Diary (8thed.). p.35.
↑ Cuthbertson, S. (1994). "Hamish Nicol Obituary". The Climbers' Club Journal. 121: 148–155.
↑ Rundell, K. (2015). London Review of Books - Katherine Rundell's Diary. 8th ed. London: p.35.
↑ Rundell, K., Barber, N. and Fan, T. (2013). Rooftoppers. Prince Frederick, MD: Recorded Books, pp.1-10.
↑ Curry, L. (2018). 'We're not heroes': an interview with the Night Climbers of Oxford. The ISIS Magazine, (18), pp.6-7.
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