<p>Many practical scenarios demand footings to be placed on the saturated normally consolidated or slightly over-consolidated clay deposits. For the design of footings in such cases, conventional theories based on homogeneous or isotropic approximations for shear strength are not readily applicable. On the other hand, for footings on non-homogeneous and anisotropic clay deposits, significant disparities in bearing capacity have been reported in existing analytical studies, primarily due to the high sensitivity of the solutions to the assumed failure mechanisms. In this study, the upper-bound limit analysis approach is applied to compute the bearing capacities of both rough and smooth strip footings resting on undrained clay deposits exhibiting non-homogeneity and anisotropy in shear strength using enhanced composite and multi-block Prandtl- and Hill-type failure mechanisms. The solutions obtained from this study are compared with available numerical and analytical studies to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed mechanisms. The results are summarized in a non-dimensional form in terms of the bearing capacity factor and the variables defining the extent of the failure zone. The study reveals that the upper-bound estimates obtained are more conservative than those derived from existing semi-analytical techniques.</p>