My father, John Smith, who has died aged 86, was an architectural historian and a specialist in church conservation who played a major role in preserving the beauty of the ancient town of Stamford in Lincolnshire. For many years John was also the full-time curator of Stamford Museum, and took its activities into the town by producing award-winning trails and giving public lectures. John wrote extensively about the 18th-century antiquarian William Stukeley, in whose Stamford garden the fragment was found. John was born in Bristol to Thomas, a cooper, and Lilian (nee Foster), a housewife. In 1978 he was appointed curator of Stamford Museum by Lincolnshire county council, and remained in that post until his retirement in 1997.