On 2 July 1829, a committee appointed by the University of Cambridge invited four architects to enter a competition to design a building housing the institution’s library, schools and museums. Drawings were submitted by 1 November, and on the 25th Cockerell was declared the winner.

Cockerell’s first design for the schools displays little of his mature style. The plan is uncharacteristically inelegant, due to the room layout having been prescribed by the committee in the competition’s instructions. They had requested, for example, the three lecture theatres to be perfunctorily placed in a separate wing on the north side. The elevations are also uncharacteristically bland and unornamented, possibly due to the architect’s stated intention of conveying ‘durability’.