Charles was the third child (second son) of John Moore and his wife Sophia (née Eames) and was born at Ilminster, Somerset, on 8 June 1815.
[2] On his father's death in 1844 he returned to Ilminster and continued the family business, with his eldest sister for a partner, until 1853, when he returned to Bath and, relinquishing trade, devoted himself to his favourite pursuit of geology, and also to municipal affairs.
[1] Moore's attention was first directed to geology by his accidental discovery, when a boy, of a fossil fish in a nodule; from that time he became an ardent collector, and before his second removal to Bath he had laid the foundation of the collection which, arranged by his own hands, now forms the ‘Geological Museum’ of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution.
In 1864 he announced at the meeting of the British Association in Bath his important discovery of the existence in England of the Rhætic Beds, which had previously been overlooked.
From these beds Moore obtained at the same time twenty-nine teeth of one of the oldest known mammals ('Microlestes moorei', Owen).