No one knew more about the round towers of England than William (Bill) Goode. He studied them from boyhood until well into his nineties, founded the Round Tower Churches Society and campaigned to save those in danger of collapse. His greatest interest lay in dating Norman and Saxon towers.

Born in Ealing, West London, Goode left school at 14 and eventually kept a pork shop at Lowestoft in Suffolk, which his wife, Ada, ran while he served in the Second World War. A wireless operator/gunner, he landed with the 1st Army at Algiers in November 1942 and joined its advance towards the 8th Army that was moving from El Alamein. He later fought in Italy. After the war Goode returned to pork retailing, then worked at the Pye radio factory in Lowestoft.

As a boy he liked to take pictures of windmills and castles with an early box camera and soon after the war he specialised in round towers. On retirement from work, round towers became his full-time hobby.

He climbed towers into his eighties. Heights did not bother him and he managed to get to the top of most, daunted only by rickety ladders and rotten floorboards.

One of the most difficult parts of the climb was lifting the heavy trap door to the highest part of the tower while balancing on a ladder. More than once Goode had to climb over a bell frame to get to the next stage.

His theory, after years of compiling data, was that most round towers were Saxon in origin, despite the presence of Norman architectural features, which he thought were added after the Norman Conquest.

Travelling around the country in an ancient Volkswagen Beetle, he carried a 19ft ladder on the roof rack, a torch, tape recorder, tape measures, cameras that coped with close-range elevations and clothes lines for measuring heights. These were the tools of his passion.

The Round Tower Churches Society has almost 600 members and the Prince of Wales is its patron. Its members enjoy visiting round towers but the organisation also encourages more profound research into furthering the understanding of this aspect of church architecture. Over the years it has given more than £60,000 in grants to these special churches, an amazing achievement for so small a society. Goode founded it in 1973 and retired as its president last year.

Goode’s book Round Tower Churches of South East England is thought to be among the most comprehensive volumes of its kind.

Goode’s wife died in 2001; their only child, a son, in 1996.

William Goode, round tower specialist, was born on June 6, 1912. He died on January 27, 2008, aged 95