Moore, Jim

• Moore, Anthony James
• Moore, James

Anthony James Moore (1929–2013), otherwise known as Jim Moore, was born 30 May 1929 in Cheveley, near Newmarket, Suffolk. He met his wife, Beryl, while they were both students at Nottingham University where he read Mathematics. He followed this with an MA in Education, completed in 1951. After university he enlisted in the RAF and was appointed to a National Service Commission as a Pilot Officer in the Education Branch at the end of 1951. He married Beryl in late 1952, and they moved to the West Country, to RAF Locking, Weston-Super-Mare, while he served in the RAF teaching mathematics. A succession of teaching posts followed, leading to a headmastership at Chew Valley Secondary School in 1962, where he stayed for two decades, transforming it from a secondary modern to a comprehensive, while pupil numbers grew from 300 to more than 1000.

He took early retirement in 1983, to expand his knowledge and love of antiques. Specialising in the restoration and sale of antique clocks, especially those of Somerset and Bristol origin, he was well known as a keen collector, dealer and valuer at auction houses and clock fairs. He was also a keen gardener and very fond of roses.

In 1991, having discovered that little was known about the local clockmakers, he set out to find what he could about them and developed a passion for research into them, expecting to list two or three hundred names and to complete the work in twelve months. In fact, enough material was discovered to fill three books, Bilbie and the Chew Valley Clockmakers (with Roy Rice and Ernest Hucker 1995), The Clockmakers of Somerset (1998) and its companion volume The Clockmakers of Bristol (1999). Altogether, over the nine years while researching and writing the books, the names and details of over three thousand craftsmen associated with clock and watchmaking in Bristol, Bath and Somerset were recorded, and more than three thousand of their clocks. The names and dates were taken from original seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century written records, including parish records, church accounts, deeds, and wills, from both private sources and county record offices.

After thirty years of a full and active retirement, Jim Moore died 8 June 2013, aged 84. Beryl died the following year on 25 November 2104. Both cremated, their ashes are buried together at Felton Church, near Lulsgate, Avon. They left four daughters and five grandchildren.

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Jim Moore’s biography was compiled by James Nye in January 2025.
Portrait image by kind permission of Gill Garrard, Jim Moore’s daughter.