Birr Castle

About this place

Birr Castle is a castle in the town of Birr, County Offaly, still home to the family of the Earl of Rosse and so generally closed to the public. Its gardens and grounds are open to visitors, though, with a science museum, a café, a reflecting telescope that was the largest in the world for decades and a modern radio telescope. There has been a castle on the site since 1170, and the O'Carroll family ruled the area from here from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Laurence Parsons was granted it in 1620 and built a new castle at the old gatehouse. The 2nd Earl gave it a Gothic look in the early nineteenth century. His son, the 3rd Earl, built the great telescope completed in 1845, and Birr became a focus for astronomy. You walk through wide meadows and around a quiet river with old bridges until the grey castle appears with its towers above a colourful garden. The gardens have box hedges over 300 years old, listed by Guinness World Records as the tallest in the world. The telescope itself is a huge structure that stops visitors in their tracks. There is also a formal pattern of low hedges near the house. The castle is 36.4 km in a straight line south of Athlone and 26 km south of Clonmacnoise. Under-18s must be accompanied by an adult. Take your time, as the grounds are wide. Tours inside the castle are limited, on a separate ticket at selected times, so check the official site. It is best to start in the morning on a dry day.