An interesting example of the mixture of mullioned windows, gables, and classic details is to be found in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge (Fig. 56). The precise date of this building is not known. In many of the colleges accounts have survived from which may be gathered the date, the cost, and even the names of the designers of the various buildings which make both Cambridge and Oxford so extremely interesting to architects. But unluckily in this instance there are no accounts left, and it is only inferentially and vaguely that a date can be suggested. Subscriptions for a new building were being asked for in 1640,[41] and again in 1679, and the building was apparently finished, or nearly so, in 1703 when Pepys made his will, by which he left his library (after his nephew’s death) either to Trinity College or Magdalene, but preferably to the latter, in which case it was to be in the “New Building,” where, in fact, it was eventually placed. It would appear from the plan, and also from the external treatment, that the design was made when the project first started in 1640; but if Professor Willis’s suggestion be accepted that the Civil War interrupted the scheme and that, in view of the change in taste, a fresh design was adopted on the resumption of effort in Charles II.’s time, the survival of the old method’s becomes still more striking. But a close examination of the work strengthens the supposition that the front was designed as a whole when the project was started in 1640; and that the pediments and cornices over the windows, together with the carving, were inserted at the close of the century. The later mouldings are larger and bolder in scale than the earlier. When it is remembered that in 1640 John Webb was drawing none but classic buildings, and that by 1679 St Paul’s Cathedral was already rising above the ground, and that it was designed on fully developed classic lines, the significance of the mixed taste in this building at Magdalene College will be the more readily appreciated. But it must be borne in mind that Webb and Sir Christopher Wren were members of a learned confraternity, while the unknown designer at Magdalene had evidently not had the same opportunities as they enjoyed for acquiring familiarity with classic detail. [Illustration: FIG. 58.--Doorway at Stanway, Gloucestershire.]