The old market and former garrison town of Birr, Co Offaly, on the Camcor River, is one of the finest heritage towns in Ireland, a status granted in 1993. Noticeably less commercial than busy Tullamore some 22 miles east of the town, it has a population of about 4,500.
Birr's Georgian Society is among the most active local groups in the country and hosts an annual Georgian cricket match "under the old rules" in the grounds of Birr Castle. The society has made determined efforts to ensure owners of listed period properties remove uPVC windows and replace them in the appropriate Georgian sash style.
Many original windows remain in buildings throughout the town. Birr has a number of beautiful Georgian terraces including Oxmantown Mall which includes the recently restored Oxmantown Hall, now Birr Theatre and Arts Centre and Johns Mall with its elegant Ionic temple, John's Hall.
On arrival in Birr, two factors are immediately apparent: the range of interesting buildings as well as the extent to which the town's prominent iconography is firmly linked to the ascendancy. There is only one piece - the Maid of Erin monument, celebrating the Manchester Martyrs - based on a nationalist theme, which stands in Market Square.
Emmet, formerly Cumberland, Square dates from the mid-18th century and is dominated by the Cumberland Pillar, a Doric column commissioned by the Parsons family, erected in 1747 and once host to a statue of the Duke of Cumberland. It depicted the great man as a Roman senator complete with toga. The "Bloody Duke" had defeated the Scots at the battle of Culloden in 1746. Scottish soldiers quartered in Birr barracks resented its presence and the statue was removed.
Just as much of the town's fame rests in its association with the great castle, family seat since 1620 to the remarkable Parsons family and internationally famous for its elegant gardens, Leviathan telescope and science museum. The lasting practical influence of the Rosse connection is evident in the town's 18th century layout and streetscapes.
Oxmantown Mall was designed in the early 19th century by the Second Earl of Rosse. The three houses standing closest to the castle are believed to pre-date 1816, while a document dated two years later records the Earl of Rosse's granting a lease to his brother Thomas to build the two large stone-faced houses.
By 1822 they were completed. Two earlier houses at the church end are thought to date from about 1780. The remainder of the houses were obviously built independently at later stages. This quiet street with its array of period houses offers a fine approach to the castle while at the other end the visual point is the Gothic-style St Brendan's Church of Ireland designed by John Johnson and completed about 1816.
About mid way along the Mall facing the terrace of houses stands Oxmantown Hall, a dramatic Victorian building featuring carved wooden gables and heraldic beasts. It was built in 1889 as a community centre for the Church of Ireland congregation.
John's Hall, now Birr Heritage Centre, was built in 1833 by the Second Earl of Rosse in memory of his son John Clere Parsons who died in 1828, of scarlet fever, aged 26. Acknowledged as the town's finest building, it had previously functioned as the Town Hall. It is flanked by a large cannon, the Crimean Gun. Certainly an unusual addition to an Irish town, it was presented to Birr by the Secretary of State for War in 1858, having been captured from the Russians at the Siege of Sevastopol three years earlier.
Across the road stands Foley's famous bronze statue of the Third Earl of Rosse (1800 1867), John Clere's brother and designer and builder of the great telescope. Commissioned by the Earl's widow, Mary Rosse the photographer, the statue was unveiled in 1876.
The earliest traces of Birr date to a monastery founded here by St Brendan of Birr. The Gospels of McRegol, now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, were made here, honouring the Abbot, at the turn of the 9th century.
Far later, during the 16th century, the O'Carrolls of Ely had their castles at Birr. In 1620, on the death of Sir Charles O'Carroll, the castle and 1,277 acres was granted to Sir Laurence Parsons, a kinsman of the Earl of Cork. This marked the beginning of the Parsons' association with Birr; indeed the town was also known as Parsonstown.
Aside from establishing the town's first markets and civic structures, Sir Laurence built most of the structure of the present castle. It was twice besieged in the 17th century, most notably by Sir Patrick Sarsfield who tried unsuccessfully to capture it after the Battle of the Boyne. Today the castle retains the Gothic aspect conferred upon it during extensive renovation carried out in the 19th century.
About 800 metres from the town itself is Birr Workhouse, a complex of three stone buildings opened in 1842. It functioned until 1922 and is believed to be the best surviving, largely unaltered, pre-Famine workhouse of the 150 built at that time in Ireland.
Local historian Margaret Hogan who has done extensive research in the castle archives recalls meeting Australians who visited Birr to revisit their family's past. "They broke down and cried at the thought of the hardship their ancestors had endured."
