Richard Gough (antiquarian)

Richard Gough FSA FRS (21 October 1735 – 20 February 1809) was a prominent and influential English antiquarian. He served as director of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 1771 to 1791; published a major work on English church monuments; and translated and edited a new edition of William Camden's Britannia.

He is not to be confused with the Richard Gough who wrote a "History of Myddle", Shropshire, in 1700.

Gough was born in London, where his father, Harry Gough, was a wealthy M.P. and director of the British East India Company. In 1751 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he began his work on British topography, published in 1768. Leaving Cambridge in 1756, without a degree, he began a series of antiquarian excursions in various parts of Great Britain.

Gough was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1767, and was its director from 1771 to 1791. As director, he urged the Society to increase the scope of its publications, especially as a means of recording England's Gothic architecture; as the intermittent series Vetusta Monumenta was the only record of its research. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1775. His books and manuscripts relating to Anglo-Saxon and northern literature, all his collections in the department of British topography, and a large number of his drawings and engravings of other archaeological remains, were bequeathed to the University of Oxford. One notable item in the bequest is the so-called Gough Map, an outstanding medieval map of Britain, which is now known by Gough's name.

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