Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Moore, Temple Lushington
MOORE, TEMPLE LUSHINGTON (1856–1920), architect, the eldest son of Major-General George Frederick Moore, by his wife, Charlotte, youngest daughter of John Lushington Reilly, of Scarvagh House, co. Down, was born 7 June 1856 at Tullamore, King's county, where his father was then quartered. He received his early education at the high school, Glasgow, to which city his father had been brought by a staff appointment. In 1872 the boy, whose health was delicate, was sent as a pupil to the Rev. Richard Wilton, curate (afterwards rector) of Londesborough, Yorkshire. Three years later he was articled to the architect, George Gilbert Scott, junior, son of Sir George Gilbert Scott. In 1878 he set up as an architect himself at Hampstead, but soon moved to a London office in Old Queen's Street, Queen Anne's Gate.
Although never in formal partnership, Temple Moore and his master, George Gilbert Scott, remained for the next twelve years in close professional association. There is actually some doubt as to the share of each in the authorship of the designs of works entrusted to Scott from this time; but it is known that owing to Scott's failing health Moore had to assume increasing responsibility. The designs themselves supply no internal evidence on this point, since the sympathy between the two men was so complete that, even after Scott's withdrawal from his profession (about 1890), Moore, who became his acknowledged successor, seems to have hesitated before innovating or imposing his own idiosyncrasies upon the practice founded by Scott. Gradually, however, it became apparent that Moore's artistic destiny was not to preserve an attenuating tradition but to bring to maturity a development which otherwise would have remained incomplete.
Throughout his career Moore found constant employment, although the list of buildings designed by him is not as long as that of many a less conscientious architect. The following are the more important new churches which he designed: Peterborough, All Saints (1885–1903); Barnsley, Yorkshire, St. Peter (1892–1911); Hull, St. Augustine (1892); West Hendon, Middlesex, St. John (1896); Mansfield, St. Mark (1897); Sledmere, Yorkshire (1897–1898); Middlesbrough, St. Cuthbert (1901) and St. Columba (1905); Bradford, St. Wilfrid, Lidget Green (1904); Harrogate, St. Wilfrid (1905–1913); Eltham, St. Luke, Well Hall (1907); Leeds, St. Margaret (1907–1909); Royton, Lancashire, St. Anne (1908); Uplands (Stroud), Gloucestershire (1908–1910); Upper Tooting, All Saints (1909); Longsight (Manchester), St. Cyprian (1914); Basingstoke, All Saints (1915–1917). Moore also designed the Anglican cathedral at Nairobi (1914), the nave of Hexham Abbey (1902–1908), and the chapels at Pusey House, Oxford, and the Bishop's Hostel, Lincoln. About sixty churches were either added to or restored by him, and in many of these there is furniture and decoration of his invention. His skill in the design of such accessories brought him also many opportunities for its display in buildings with which he was not otherwise connected.
Moore was the architect of Bilbrough Hall, near York, Southill Park, near Bracknell, Berkshire, and several other houses, including about ten parsonages. He designed alterations and additions at Warter Priory and at Allerton Hall, Yorkshire, and elsewhere, and gained great credit from his contemporaries for his restoration of the Treasurer's House and of St. William's College at York. Among his miscellaneous works are some schools and parish halls, the court house at Helmsley, a hospital at Woodhouse Spa, and the Hostel of the Resurrection at Leeds.
Moore's work, like that of G. G. Scott, his master, is important in the history of English architecture not only for its beauty but for its emancipation from the uneasy theories which had hampered its antecedents. Assuming an essential incompatibility between mediaeval architecture and modern life, Augustus Welby Pugin [q.v.], the pioneer of the Gothic revival, had striven to lead men back to mediaevalism; his successor, Sir George Gilbert Scott [q.v.], had striven to bring mediaeval architecture up to date. The school identified with the name of George Gilbert Scott, junior, held that both of these processes were unnecessary; that the Gothic style was still the most natural medium for the church architect to employ, and that its resumption meant not the adoption but the abandonment of a restrictive convention. Moore, even more than Scott, seems to have thought and built in Gothic without any effort at stylism. His designs are indistinguishable in kind from those of the Middle Ages, and as independent of exact precedent as they. The limits of his style were the limits of his predilections: his buildings, although purely Gothic, appear to have been designed with no constraint save that of his vigilant good taste. The church of St. Wilfrid, Harrogate, and that of St. Peter, Barnsley, show his style at its grandest; the chapel at Pusey House, Oxford, and that at the Bishop's Hostel, Lincoln, at its most delicate.
Moore died at Hampstead 30 June 1920. He married in 1884 Emma Storrs, elder daughter of the Rev. Richard Wilton, his former tutor, who became canon of York Minster in 1893. They had three daughters and one son, Richard Temple Moore, who assisted his father in his later work, and was drowned in the s.s. Leinster in 1918. Among Temple Moore's pupils was (Sir) Giles Scott, the son of his master.
[Architectural Review, January and February 1926 (containing a descriptive list of Moore's ecclesiastical designs, illustrated); private information.]