Queer Places:
Ravensthorpe, 6 Downside Rd, Bristol BS8 2XE, UK
6 Northcote Rd, Bristol BS8 3HB, UK
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
St Mary the Virgin, 2 Church Ln, Portbury, Bristol BS20 7TR, UK
Edward Norman Peter Moor
(January 10, 1851 – March 6, 1895)
was Assistant Master at Clifton College, co. Gloucester, from 1874 to 1895. According to "School: A Monthly Record of Educational Thought and Progress," Moor was regard as
"one of the greatest teachers of
his generation." According to "The Life of Bishop Percival," by William Temple, (1921) Moor was
the "wisest of advisers in all school matters, and a fine and true scholar."
Edward Norman Peter Moor was the son of the Rev. James Hoare Moor (1816-1856), M.A. Magdalen College, 1840; Master of Kingsbridge School, county Devon, and Emma Jane Maitland (the daughter of Col. Gilbert Maitland of East India Madras European Regiment).
While in Clifton in 1868, John Addington Symonds met and fell in love with Norman Moor, a youth about to go up to Oxford, who became his pupil.[5] Symonds and Moor had a four-year affair but did not have sex.[6] According to Symonds' diary of 28 January 1870, "I stripped him naked and fed sight, touch and mouth on these things."[7] The relationship occupied a good part of his time. (On one occasion he left his family and travelled to Italy and Switzerland with Moor.[8]) It also inspired his most productive period of writing poetry, published in 1880 as New and Old: A Volume of Verse.[9]
Moor attended Clifton College, B.A. 1876 and matriculated 31 January 1870, at Balliol College, Oxford, and was a Scholar from 1869-74, B.A. 1875, M.A. 1876.
In December 1878, Edward Norman Peter Moor married Emily Sibella Powell (1849-1924). Emily was the daughter of Rev. Thomas Edward Powell, Rector of Bisham, co. Berks. She was two years his senior. They had two daughters: Margaret Frances Moor, b. 29 March 1880, and Mary Katherine Moor, b. 1 April 1885. The pair lived initially at Cecil Road, but made their married home in Northcote Road, close to Clifton College where Moor taught as assistant Master. Symonds spent that winter at Davos, but received visits that month from two other former Clifton students: Horatio F. Brown and Hugh Pearson. In a later letter to Henry Graham Dakyns he noted “I fancy you think of Mrs E. N. P. Moor? I don’t care for her photograph.”[23]
Moor died at 34 College Road, Clifton, aged 44, on Wednesday, 6 March, and was buried at Portbury, co. Somerset, on Saturday, 9 March 1895.
Northcote Road, Bristol
Clifton College, UK
Downside Road, Bristol
My published books:
