St Michael & All Angels
About our ParishThe Architect - Temple Lushington Moore 1856-1920.
Temple Moore was born into a military family in Ireland. His father, a devout churchman, passed on his love of painting and drawing to his sons, skills in which the young Temple developed an early professional aptitude.
In 1872 Temple was sent as a pupil to the Rev. Richard Wilton, Rector of Londesborough in the East Riding of Yorkshire, a county with which he soon developed a strong affinity. The architect George Gilbert Scott who was working in the area tool the young Temple Moore on as an articled pupil and enlisted his help with many Yorkshire commissions.
Scott's health deteriorated, so Temple Moore's involvement in the practice became more prominent. During this period Moore developed his own skills and personal architectural style in the Gothic tradition which he encountered on his may visits to the abbeys of the North and the Continent. In 1867 he came under the patronage of the 1st. Earl of Feversham at Duncombe Park, Helmsley, and with Scott assisted in the building and design of the tiny church of St. Mary Magdalene, East Moors, for the Earl: which became with St. Wilfrid's Church Harrogate the subject of the poem "Perp Revival i' the North" by Sir John Betjeman. He was also to build one of his finest churches for the Wolds landowner Sir Tatton Sykes at Sledmore.
His prolific architectural practice was ultimately to be responsible for the design of over 40 churches, a cathedral in Nairobi, Pusey House in Oxford, and the re-building of St. William's College in the shadow of York Minster. At the turn of the century he was given one of his most important commissions, that of designing and building St Wilfrid's on the Duchy estate in Harrogate. He had recently been restoring Hexham Abbey and much of its medieval designs were to be incorporated in the new church.
During the building of St. Wilfrid's, he took into partnership the young friend of one of his daughters,- a budding architect of the same surname, Leslie Moore - who was to become his son-in-law and ultimately to be responsible for completing many of his unfinished works. The firm they formed became known as Temple Moore & Moore.
On the 30th June 1920 Temple Moore suffered a cerebral hemorrhage whilst working on a Lincolnshire church and died shortly afterwards.
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