The Birr Scientific and
Heritage Foundation
Birr Castle, Birr, Co. Offaly
Tel.: 0509 20336
Fax: 0509 21583
Discover the largest telescope in the world for over 70 years; constructed here at
Birr Castle in the 1840s by the Third Earl of
Rosse.The telescope looks and moves just as it did
over 150 years ago. Travel through the evolution
of astronomy from the 17th century with Gallileo, Newton, Hershell and finally meet
the Third Earl of Rosse and his GreatTelescope. Re-live the challenges he had to overcome in order to
build the largest telescope in the world, in rural Ireland, in the 1840s. The casting and polishing of
the speculum, the building of the observatory and much more... Share in the discoveries of the Third
Earl and compare his original drawings of faraway galaxies with photographs taken with
contemporary telescopes.
However, at Birr Castle Demesne there is much more than science and technology. The gardens
are the largest in the country and feature thousands of trees and plants propagated from seed that
was collected all over the world by three generations of the Parsons family, Earls of
Rosse. 50 of these
trees are listed in the publication Champion Trees of the British Isles.
The Millennium Gardens were created out of the passionate love for gardens of Michael and Anne, the Sixth Earl and Countess of
Rosse. Features include a box hedging parterre, in the shape of crossed'Rs' surrounded by the
romantic hombearn cloister walk, the delphinium border, the beautiful PaeoniaAnne Rosse - a hybrid
peony developed at Birr and tucked away in an intimate courtyard near the glasshouses, the pergola with
a spectacular wisteria multijuga which is 90 years old.
