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.

[2] He was also a contributor to English Domestic Architecture of the XVII & XVIII Centuries by Horace Field and Michael Bunney (1905).

In 1908, Moore made the organ case, choir stalls, reredos and communion rail for St Michael and All Angels Church, Badminton.

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".

[a] 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.