Discover Birr

Parsonstown and the Leviathan

Birr, Biorra in Irish, grew up around the monastery St Brendan of Birr founded here in the sixth century, and the town's oldest claim to fame predates the Georgian streets by a thousand years: the Synod of Birr in 697 AD enacted the Cain Adomnain, the law protecting non-combatants that is often called Ireland's first human rights charter. Around 800 AD the scribe MacRegol produced a decorated copy of the four Gospels here; the original is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford and a facsimile sits in Birr Library.

The Parsons family arrived in 1620 and the town was called Parsonstown until 1899. They built the malls, the avenues and the perimeter of Georgian houses that survive almost intact, and inside the demesne wall they built telescopes. The Third Earl's six-foot reflector of 1845 pulled visitors from across Europe; his son measured the heat of the Moon; his youngest son Charles invented the compound steam turbine in 1884, the one that took his name to sea in Turbinia ten years later. Science is still the town's business: I-LOFAR receives radio signals from the same parkland today.