John Rooke Corbett better known as J. Rooke Corbett was one of the founder-members of The Rucksack Club

The Rucksack Club

The Rucksack Club was founded in Manchester in 1902 and has a current membership of well over 400 men and women. According to the Rules, "The objects of the Club are to facilitate walking tours, cave explorations and mountaineering in the British Isles and elsewhere, and bring into fellowship men...

 and their Convener of Rambles. In the 1920s Corbett compiled a list of hills between 2500 and 3000 feet with a prominence

Topographic prominence

In topography, prominence, also known as autonomous height, relative height, shoulder drop , or prime factor , categorizes the height of the mountain's or hill's summit by the elevation between it and the lowest contour line encircling it and no higher summit...

 of at least 500 feet. It was not published until after his death, when his sister passed it to the Scottish Mountaineering Club

Scottish Mountaineering Club

The Scottish Mountaineering Club is Scotland's second oldest mountaineering club. Founded in 1889, in Glasgow, the private club, with about 400 members, publishes guidebooks and runs a list of Munroists.-History:At the time of the club's founding there were a number of experienced Alpinists...

. It is now well known to Scottish hillwalkers as The Corbetts.

Early life

Rooke Corbett attended both Hulme

Hulme Grammar School

Hulme Grammar School is an independent grammar school situated on and around Chamber Road, about three-quarters of a mile south of the centre of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, between Frederick Street and Windsor Road.-History:...

 and Manchester

Manchester Grammar School

The Manchester Grammar School is the largest independent day school for boys in the UK . It is based in Manchester, England...

 Grammar School

Grammar school

A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...

s. While attending St John's College, Cambridge

St John's College, Cambridge

St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....

 from 1895 to 1898, he walked from Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 to Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 at the beginning of term, and back again at the end.

Climbing

He was the fourth person to complete the Munro

Munro

A Munro is a mountain in Scotland with a height over . They are named after Sir Hugh Munro, 4th Baronet , who produced the first list of such hills, known as Munros Tables, in 1891. A Munro top is a summit over 3,000 ft which is not regarded as a separate mountain...

s in 1930 and the first Sassenach

Sassenach

Sassenach is a word used chiefly by the Scots to designate an Englishman. It derives from the Scottish Gaelic Sasunnach meaning, originally, "Saxon", from the Latin "Saxones"; it was also formerly applied by Highlanders to Lowlanders. As employed by Scots or Scottish English-speakers today it is...

to do so. He was also the second to complete the "Tops".