In 1751 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he began his work on British topography, eventually published in 1768.
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.
Gough was a precocious child, and at twelve had translated from the French a history of the Bible, which his mother printed for private circulation.
Meantime he published, in 1786, the first volume of his work the Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain, applied to illustrate the history of families, manners, habits and arts at the different periods from the Norman Conquest to the Seventeenth Century.
[3] Among Gough's minor works are An Account of the Bedford Missal (in manuscript); A Catalogue of the Coins of Canute, King of Denmark (1777); History of Pleshey in Essex (1803); An Account of the Coins of the Seleucidae, Kings of Syria (1804); and "History of the Society of Antiquaries of London," prefixed to their Archaeologia.