Secretiveness.

John Bulmer, the great British photographer celebrated for his 1960s photos of the industrial north of England, is less well known for these early images of the secret night climbers at Cambridge University ...

John Bulmer was in his second year of an engineering degree at Cambridge University in the late 1950s when a recently graduated friend tipped him off about the night climbers, a secretive group of students who spent their nights scaling the tops of the college buildings. Though he wasn’t keen on heights, as a photographer who had already started to sell pictures to the national press, the opportunity was too good to pass up. So he started tracking their movements, enlisting a helper to fire off an old-fashioned flashbulb as he worked. “I wanted to photograph them in their environment, so quite often I used wide angle lenses and open flashes, because you can’t climb up a building with a tripod,” he explains.

There was a good reason for the secretiveness. Night climbing had been a thing in Cambridge for many decades – a pseudonymous book about it, now a collector’s item, was published in the 1930s – and punishment for anyone caught on the rooftops was instant expulsion. On one occasion, Bulmer and his helper narrowly escaped an encounter with some college staff by hiding behind a pillar: “We heard one saying to another: ‘That’s odd. Looks like lightning up there.’” On another, in his hurry to escape capture, he impaled himself on some ferocious spikes, leaving a permanent scar.

Compulsory.

At eighteen I went to Cambridge, and bought two pipes in a case. In those days Greek was compulsory, but not more so than two pipes in a case.

A.A. Milne, from "Smoking as a Fine Art"

Love.

At this very moment there may be a dozen climbers on the buildings of Cambridge. They do not know each other; they are unlikely to meet. And inadvertently they will find what we found, a love for the buildings and the climbs upon them, a love for the night and the thrill of darkness.

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Tomfoolery.

The magic and vertiginous tomfoolery of 1930s Cambridge undergraduates climbing the city’s buildings by night ...

"Some airy devil hovers in the sky," reads a delightful, hand-written note on the verso of an inserted photograph from Thomas Mailaender’s The Night Climbers of Cambridge, recently published by The Archive of Modern Conflict. "It was this quotation," it continues, "which gave me the idea of the climb."

Mailaender, a Parisian artist described as "Bernd and Hilla Becher under the influence of Pastis", recently acquired this curious collection of prints depicting Cambridge University undergraduates from the 1930s, who photographed themselves in action whilst climbing the city’s rooftops. At times, the students exhibit a reckless disregard for their own safety as we see them scaling 40ft high walls or hanging off window ledges and guttering.

Elsewhere, we watch them clambering up drainpipes and perched atop spires, all pictured under the glare of the moon, camera flashes and the watchful eye of the occasional policeman. Like escaping fugitives (yet wearing blazers and ties), these daredevils come alive in the shadows and fog, absorbing the energy of the night-time to test their limits and discover those passions that are suppressed all day.

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Frolics.

There is no night porter wandering about in King's. The authorities pay you the compliment, ugly gate-crasher, of treating you as a grown-up. And since we are not grown-up, you and I, we will perform our midnight frolics as the inmates burn the midnight oil.

Whipplesnaith, from The Night Climbers of Cambridge

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

There is no night porter wandering about in King's. The authorities pay you the compliment, ugly gate-crasher, of treating you as a grown-up. And since we are not grown-up, you and I, we will perform our midnight frolics as the inmates burn the midnight oil.

Whipplesnaith

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