A second competition was announced between the same four architects in June 1830 after it became clear that the complex would have to be built on a limited budget. Although his first design had been the original winner, Cockerell’s second design also caught the imagination of some of the committee, especially the mathematician George Peacock. With their encouragement, Cockerell developed a comprehensive updating of Gibbs’s design; this was submitted on 9 October.

Purity of period style had, however, become the ideal in Cambridge, and what Cockerell produced was too eclectic in its influences. Minor deviations from the instructions were blamed, and on 10 December victory was given to the more purely Greek designs of Thomas Rickman, then at work on New Court at St John’s College.