Plan and perspective view
Pencil and wash; pen and wash. 62×46
MS. Add.9272/4/14

Alongside his principal design, Cockerell also presented the judges with an alternative option, for which he produced detailed plans but no elevations. In this design he dispensed with the competition programme, instead incorporating the theatres into a single courtyard, and moving the divinity and law schools into a new wing. The latter element was derived from designs for university buildings on the same site, conceived in 1721 by the Baroque architect James Gibbs. He had proposed a large U-shaped court, housing the library in the centre, with north and south wings
housing the Senate House and university offices respectively. Of this design, only the Senate House was built, in 1722-5, but the complete project was well known from its appearance in Gibbs’s Book of Architecture (1728).

Two types of view are presented on one page: a plan of the first floor, and a perspective view showing the replica Senate House from the south. Cockerell described the replica as ‘in conformity with the designs of Gibbs & Sir J. Burroughs, with the difference that the centre being pierced, & forming an open portico, renders this plan more light & less confined than theirs, & makes a magnificent portal to the whole building with a very striking effect in the approach from London’.