Temple Lushington Moore

Temple Lushington Moore (7 June 1856 – 30 June 1920) was an English architect who practised in London but whose work can be seen across England, particularly in the North. He is famous for a series of fine Gothic Revival churches built between about 1890 and 1917 and also restored many churches and designed church fittings. He did some work on domestic properties, and also designed memorial crosses.

Life and career

Temple Moore was born in Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland, and was the son of an army officer. He was educated at Glasgow High School, then from 1872 privately by the Revd Richard Wilton in Londesborough in the East Riding of Yorkshire. In 1875, he moved to London and was articled to architect George Gilbert Scott, Jr. Although Moore set up his own practice in 1878, he continued to work closely with Scott, helping to complete his works when Scott's health deteriorated. From the early 1880s he travelled widely studying buildings on the continent, chiefly in Germany, France and Belgium. He was particularly impressed by the great medieval brick churches of north Germany, echoes of which can be found in some of his own impressively austere designs.

In 1884 Moore married Emma Storrs Wilton, the eldest daughter of the Rev. Wilton and thus became related to Canon Horace Newton; for whom he undertook church restoration work and a large house, Holmwood, Redditch, Worcestershire. Moore's pupils included Giles Gilbert Scott, son of George Gilbert Scott, Jr.

Works

Moore's main contributions to architecture were his churches; he designed about 40 new churches, and All Saints' Cathedral, Nairobi. He also restored older churches, and made alterations and additions to others. In addition he designed fittings and items of furniture for the interiors of churches. In other fields, he designed and altered country houses, and other buildings including schools, vicarages, parish halls, a court house, and memorial and churchyard crosses.

Moore's career spanned the closing years of the Gothic Revival, but he developed the style rather than merely continuing it. In his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography the author states that his "artistic destiny was not to preserve an attenuating tradition but to bring to maturity a development which otherwise would have remained incomplete", and also expresses the opinion that he was "England's leading ecclesiastical architect from the mid-Edwardian years". Moore was an Anglican in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, which prefers its churches to have beautiful surroundings and fine fittings to enhance worship; Moore's designs reflect this. For his secular works, Moore received praise from his contemporaries for remodelling South Hill Park in Berkshire, and for restoring the Treasurer's House and St William's College in York.