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A study of bearing capacity and compressibility characteristics of cohesive soil, reinforced by geogrid and supporting square footing loads has been conducted. The lack of adequate frictional resistance between clay and reinforcing elements was compensated by using a thin sand layer (lens) encapsulating the geogrid sheet. In this way, tensile forces induced in the geogrid were transferred to the bulk clay medium through the sand particles and soil reinforcement was improved Experiments were conduced on two sets of specimens, one set of 1 x 1 x 1 m dimension and the footing size of 19 x 19 cm (series A), and the other set of 0.15 x 0.15 x 0.15 m dimension and the footing size of 3.7 x 3.7 cm (series B). The loading systems for the above specimens were stress controlled and strain controlled respectively. All specimens were saturated and presumably loaded under an undrained condition. The results qualitatively confirmed the effectiveness of the sand lens in improving the bearing capacity and settlement characteristics of the model footing. In series A, the maximum increase in the bearing capacity due to the presence of the sand lens was 17% whereas in series B, the amount of increase was 24%. The percentage reductions in the settlement for these results were 30% and 46% respectively.