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