The following obituary was published in The Times on 4 May 2008.

Architectural historian who made an invaluable contribution to the preservation of Britain’s ecclesiastical heritage

Thomas Cocke

Aged 16 Thomas Cocke passed his A levels and won an open scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge. With two years to wait before going up to Cambridge he left Marlborough (where he was a scholar) and went on his travels. After visiting the US, where he became an honorary member of a Native American tribe, he went to Bologna to stay with an aunt, Kitsy Colliva. She had married the city’s mayor in 1933 and remained in Italy during the Second World War. There he learnt Italian and laid the foundations of his lifelong interest in Italian art and architecture.

His interest in matters ecclesiastical had been sparked at school by his friendship with the family of Joseph Fison, the highly cultured and urbane Bishop of Salisbury (his appointment to the rural diocese of Salisbury was likened by The Times to “harnessing a racehorse to a farm cart”). Still earlier, Cocke’s precocity had been apparent when he won the Townsend Warner History Prize for prep schools in 1961 and 1962.

His father and grandfather were City accountants, and Cocke grew up in a comfortable house in Wimbledon. The family business interests extended to a share in the famous London pub, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, acquired to preserve its atmosphere. At Pembroke he changed from classics to history, winning a first and then moving to the Courtauld Institute where he was one of a group of talented art history students. They included Neil MacGregor, who would become director of the British Museum, and Alastair Laing, curator of paintings at the National Trust. Cocke’s Italian interests were fostered by Anthony Blunt while his study of Gothic profited from two brilliant tutors, Peter Kidson (with whom he was later to write a monograph on Salisbury Cathedral) and George Zarnecki.

His PhD thesis was on Attitudes to the Restoration of Medieval Buildings in England from c 1550 to c 1775. During this time he built up a commanding knowledge of the liturgy and furnishing of cathedrals. He also championed the work of the 18th-century Cambridge architect James Essex, the first to take an antiquarian interest in medieval architecture, carrying out exemplary repairs to the octagon of Ely Cathedral. This led in 1984 to his exhibition, The Ingenious Mr Essex, at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Cocke’s career illustrates the difficulties which face even the most talented architectural historians in an exciting field of studies which remains without a career structure. In 1971 he went to teach at the University of Manchester history of art department and played an active role in the lively Manchester group of the Victorian Society. In 1976 he joined the Salisbury office of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, producing a scholarly and illuminating volume, Churches of South East Wiltshire (1987) and contributing to the volume Salisbury: The Houses of the Close in 1993.

During this time Cocke applied for and was offered one of the best posts in British architectural history, as curator of the great drawings collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, but did not take up the job because of an in-house challenge to the appointment.

In 1990 he became secretary of the Council for the Care of Churches, the Church of England body which advises on and assesses schemes for remodelling churches. In this post his great knowledge of liturgy and commitment as a practising Anglican led him to play an important role as a negotiator at a time of enormous pressure for often damaging change. After the Heritage Lottery Fund began its joint scheme of grants to churches with English Heritage in 1995 he was an influential member of the advisory panel ensuring the smooth progress of the scheme.

Cocke’s interest in church furnishings prompted an increasing role in church recording, particularly in the voluntary work being done by the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies (Nadfas), which had taken on the task of compiling detailed inventories of parish churches all over England. In 2001 he became the chief executive of Nadfas, spending five years there until a clash of personalities prompted him to resign. His career never recovered, though he continued to teach, write and lead tours. Last year he went with the Society of Architectural Historians to Bologna where he explained the city’s version of the Church of Holy Sepulchre and Pilate’s garden, which continue to serve for annual re-enactments of the Passion.

Cocke was a prolific writer and contributor to studies. He wrote an illuminating series of papers for the British Archaeological Association which each year holds its conference at a different cathedral. Cocke’s contributions on Gloucester, Lincoln, Ely, Lichfield, Hereford and Salisbury covered the work done in the 17th and 18th centuries (and also extended to 19th-century restoration), prompting a new respect for the work of this period.

He played a key role in the exhibition Nine Hundred Years: the Restorations of Westminster Abbey held in St Margaret’s Westminster in 1993 and earlier contributed a paper on The Rediscovery of the Romanesque in the Arts Council’s important Romanesque exhibition in 1984.

Cocke was generous with both his knowledge and his time, befriending the lonely and entertaining generously. He served on many voluntary committees. These included the executive committees of the Georgian Group and the Society of Architectural Historians, the councils of the Society of Antiquaries, the British Archaeological Association and the Royal Archaeological Institute. He was a trustee and joint secretary of the Pevsner Memorial Trust. Latterly he had been chair of the Mausolea and Monuments Trust, which was founded in 1997.

No less important was his contribution to the fabric advisory committees for Ely and St Edmundsbury cathedrals and Westminster Abbey. He had also completed a study of Brighton’s Victorian churches, to be published by SAVE Britain’s Heritage.

Though suffering from severe depression, Cocke had latterly begun working at Westminster Abbey, where he was about to embark on the important task of compiling a complete inventory of the abbey’s furnishings.

Thomas Cocke is survived by his wife, Carolyn, and by a son and daughter.

Thomas Cocke, architectural historian, was born on February 19, 1949. He was found drowned on April 23, 2008, aged 59

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The following obituary, written by Richard Halsey, FSA, and Hugh Richmond, FSA, was published in the Independent on 15 July 2008.

Thomas Cocke: architectural historain

Thomas Cocke was the leading authority on the history of the restoration and repair of England's parish churches and cathedrals between the Reformation and the mid-19th-century Gothic Revival. That had been the subject of his Courtauld Institute doctorate in 1982 and set the scene for his subsequent career in conservation.

In pursuing this under-studied subject, he embraced both the medieval and the classical worlds, and this broad knowledge was reflected in his membership of a wide range of professional groups, charitable bodies and learned societies. His most recent role, as Chairman of the Mausolea and Monuments Trust, exemplified his passion for championing the less fashionable but no less deserving areas of conservation. He combined his wide knowledge of architectural history and ecclesiology to great effect in the service of the Church of England. Yet, he also found time to support the parish churches where he lived in Cambridge and Suffolk, to be an Extra Member of Court in the Skinners' Company, an ex-officio governor of Tonbridge School and to co-found the Pevsner Memorial Trust.

Cocke was born in 1949 and educated at Marlborough College. There, he consolidated a remarkably early interest in history by gaining the Townsend History Prize, before winning an Open Scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was awarded a first in History and the Hadley History Prize in 1970. His growing passion for architectural history led him on to an MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and his first publication, "Pre- 19th-century attitudes to Romanesque architecture in England" (which appeared in The Journal of the British Archaeological Association in 1973), was a forerunner to his PhD.

He joined the expanding History of Art Department of Manchester University in 1973, teaching post-medieval art history. He also began a long involvement in adult education, with the Open University and subsequently at Cambridge and elsewhere. He was at his most eloquent when on site, interpreting the complexities of a historic building to students. In 1973, too, he married Carolyn Clark, "the best decision I ever made", and they quickly established a reputation for entertaining in great style, promoting lively conversation around the dinner table.

In 1976 he returned to his roots in London, joining the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England as a Historic Buildings Investigator. Working also from the Salisbury and Cambridge offices, he came to acquire a deep understanding of the fabric and history of all types of ancient buildings, becoming increasingly focused on parish churches and cathedrals.

In Cambridge, he became involved with the architectural life of the city as a member of the Listed Buildings Panel and teacher at the Faculty of Architecture and Darwin College, where he was elected a Fellow in 1987. His doctorate was completed in time for him to curate an exhibition on the 18th-century architect James Essex at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1984 and to make important contributions to the "English Romanesque Art 1066-1200" exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (also 1984) and its successor, "The Age of Chivalry", at the Royal Academy in 1987.

His desire to preserve, as much as to understand, the ecclesiastical heritage led to Cocke's membership of the executive committee of the Church of England's Council for the Care of Churches, from 1981 until his appointment as the full-time secretary of the council in 1990. He was immediately faced with the challenge of getting the new Care of Churches Measure to work. The measure required much greater co-operation between Diocesan Advisory Committees, the national amenity societies, English Heritage and local planning authorities. Hard work among his wide range of contacts reassured many that the system was the best way to harness the specialist knowledge existing in the voluntary sector.

Cocke was well aware of the antipathy towards historic buildings that existed in the Church and in 1993 engineered the first debate for many years in the General Synod, "Mission in Mortar". To his great disappointment no senior churchman championed it, but it started a change of direction, initially leading to the appointment of an archaeologist to the council's staff. The changes he initiated in the council's operations were more successful. Following IRA bomb damage, in 1994 the council moved from All Hallows Church, London Wall, to Little College Street in the heart of Westminster and close to Church House. He was adept at placing particular people where they could be most useful and effective. This skill helped him to rationalise the council's 12 expert committees to four, and to overhaul its grants programme effectively.

The arrival of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) in 1995 promised to bring untold riches, but it was quickly overwhelmed by expectations and government rules on additionality. Cocke joined the HLF's small Places of Worship Advisory Committee, to help the trustees fund the repair and improvement of places of worship in partnership with English Heritage. Once again, his own academic credentials as well as his numerous contacts reassured sceptics in the Church and heritage bodies alike that lottery money was an acceptable resource essential to encourage well-disposed but impoverished congregations.

The decision to leave the council in 2001 was entirely his, essentially motivated by an ever-present wish to advance his career, but partly because he regretted the proposed restructuring of the council. His appointment as chief executive of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (Nadfas) brought his encyclopaedic knowledge of English fine arts, his long experience of supporting volunteers and his management skills together to help restructure the charity.

His enthusiasm to leave a legacy celebrating the history of the charity resulted in the commissioning of Behind the Acanthus: the Nadfas story (2008), by Helen Clifford. Cocke's vision was to tie publication in with this year's celebration by Nadfas of its 40 years of education and conservation in heritage and the arts. He took early retirement in 2006, hoping to write and to work in his core area of interest, but this was not enough and led to ill health, clinical depression and his untimely death by drowning.

He was a devoted family man and a generous host to a wide circle of friends. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1983, serving on its Council from 2004-08, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1997 and always maintained that he was an honorary member of an American Indian tribe.

Thomas Hugh Cocke, architectural historian: born London 19 February 1949; Lecturer, History of Art Department, Manchester University 1973-76; Investigator, Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England 1976-90; FSA 1983; Member, Faculty of Architecture and History of Art, Cambridge University 1985-2000, Fellow, Darwin College 1987-2001; Chief Executive, National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies 2001-06; Chairman, Mausolea and Monuments Trust 2005-2008; married 1973 Carolyn Clark (one son, one daughter); died 23 April 2008.