Birr

Birr (Biorra, "plain of water") is a town in County Offaly in the Midlands of Ireland, with a population of 5741 in 2016. Birr is a well preserved Georgian town with graceful streets and elegant buildings. From 1620 to 1899 it was called Parsonstown for the Parsons family who were local landowners and Earls of Rosse. In the Victorian era it was at the leading edge of astronomy thanks to the 3rd Earl's telescope.

Understand
The first documented telescope was a patent of 1608: Galileo quickly learned of it, built his own, and made a series of discoveries. These early designs used refractive lenses, which distorted the light with a rainbow-effect on the colours, so their useful size was limited. Then came reflectors, using concave mirrors to focus distant light - these could be made much larger, hence magnify more, and probe deeper into space. William Parsons (1800-1867), the 3rd Earl of Rosse, built a 36-inch reflector and reckoned he could go further. No dilettante aristocrat he: he took first class honours in mathematics and had a distinguished academic career. The main technical challenges were accuracy of mirror grinding, tarnishing of the mirror surface, and supporting versus maneuvering such weight. By 1845 his "leviathan" 72-inch telescope was completed at Birr Castle, with its great cylinder and mounting, like a steamship met with an accident down a beer-cellar trapdoor.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken.... — the Leviathan came just too late to discover Neptune, but many other bodies were seen for the first time, or as never before. The main work of the telescope was on stars, mapping their position, brightness and colour. Particularly puzzling were "nebulae", fuzzy things, were they clouds, or masses of stars that couldn't be distinguished, or what? Parsons showed that some (e.g., Andromeda) were such masses, and therefore incredibly distant even compared to most stars, in other words they were separate galaxies. But his rival John Herschel (whose father had discovered Uranus) maintained that at least some were gas clouds, within which stars were born, to live and die in various ways. Just as geologists such as Hutton had showed the continuing evolution of land forms, and Darwin was revealing that biological evolution continued, so this controversy revealed a still-evolving, turbulent universe. And all this was achieved using only the visible light spectrum, observed from the bottom of earth's moist and murky atmosphere, beneath the clouds that tumble over County Offaly.

Get in
Kearns buses run from Birr via Tullamore to Dublin in the morning, returning in the afternoon. They take about two hours, with multiple stops in Dublin but not Busáras or the airport. There are four M-F between 5:30AM and 9:30AM, returning 3-6PM; one Saturday and 2-3 Sunday. One bus per day starts from Portumna.

Another Kearns Bus 843 plies between Birr and Tullamore once in the middle of the day, and Bus 847 runs once Birr-Tullamore-Maynooth.

Bus Éireann 72 runs daily from Limerick via Nenagh to Birr, taking 80 min, and continuing to Athlone (another 50 min).

M-F an extra bus 323X runs from Limerick via the University campus and Nenagh as far as Birr. is Birr's main bus stop.

From Dublin by road follow M7 to Roscrea then north on N52.

Get around
Walk or cycle.

See

 * Birr town centre is a well-preserved Georgian townscape. The best of it is around Emmett Square where N52 makes a zigzag, John's Place branching east, and leafy Oxmantown Mall starting a block north and leading to the castle gates. The Seffin Stone on John's Place is somewhat older: its inscriptions date it to 3200 BC like Newgrange. In folklore it marks the exact centre of Ireland, and was inscribed by Finn MacCool, hence Suigh Finn the seat of Finn, so what part of his giant anatomy was doing the inscribing? The square used to be "Cumberland Square", and the column bore a statue to the Duke of Cumberland, victor at Culloden in 1746. In 1915 the statue was removed before it either fell down or was torn down. The square is now named for Robert Emmett (1778-1803), executed for rebellion: "When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written" - though there are over 70 different versions of his final speech from the dock.
 * Crotty's Church on Castle St looks like a Presbyterian chapel and indeed became one, but it was built by a breakaway Roman Catholic faction, a rare schism in the RC church. Michael Crotty was the local curate and in 1826 thought he'd been appointed as parish priest, then another fellow got the post. Crotty was excluded from the new RC chapel that he'd done much to establish, and together with his cousin William Crotty began to preach a doctrine of piqued anti-popery. These latter-day Luthers didn't have 95 theses to nail to the church door but had many priestly abuses to rail against, such as "clay money": people were paying for consecrated clay to be put into their coffins, to save their dead bodies from sullying by heretic remains. The Crottys had 1000 followers and by 1839 had built the Castle St chapel, nicely in time for the schism to peter out. Their bilious ranting sermons drove parishioners either back into the arms of the RC mother church, or to the Presbyterians for more of the same.
 * : see Roscrea for this ramshackle Gothic pile, energetically touted since 1910 as Ireland's most haunted house. There are so many contenders for that title, there needs to be a structured, televised tournament, with the spookiest qualifying for the European Finals in Transylvania.
 * : see Roscrea for this ramshackle Gothic pile, energetically touted since 1910 as Ireland's most haunted house. There are so many contenders for that title, there needs to be a structured, televised tournament, with the spookiest qualifying for the European Finals in Transylvania.

Do

 * Birr Leisure Centre has a gym, pool and fitness classes. It's by the rugby club north side of County Arms Hotel.
 * Birr Vintage Week is an arts festival in August.
 * Birr Vintage Week is an arts festival in August.
 * Birr Vintage Week is an arts festival in August.
 * Birr Vintage Week is an arts festival in August.
 * Birr Vintage Week is an arts festival in August.

Buy
The main store is Tesco on Railway Road south side of town, open M-Sa 8AM-10PM, Su 10AM-8PM.

Sleep

 * Emmett House is a B&B facing Dooly's across the square.
 * The Maltings on Castle St are self-catering apartments in a converted storehouse; they no longer offer B&B.
 * The Maltings on Castle St are self-catering apartments in a converted storehouse; they no longer offer B&B.
 * The Maltings on Castle St are self-catering apartments in a converted storehouse; they no longer offer B&B.
 * The Maltings on Castle St are self-catering apartments in a converted storehouse; they no longer offer B&B.
 * The Maltings on Castle St are self-catering apartments in a converted storehouse; they no longer offer B&B.
 * The Maltings on Castle St are self-catering apartments in a converted storehouse; they no longer offer B&B.

Connect
As of April 2021, Birr has 5G from Eir and Three, but a poor signal from Vodafone.

Go next

 * Tullamore has two distilleries open for tours, Tullamore DEW and Kilbeggan.
 * Roscrea has a castle and many other medieval remains.
 * Athlone has fine Georgian and Victorian architecture.
 * Portumna in lowland east Galway has an early example of a bling castle.