Heritage
The Story of Birr
Birr, Ireland’s historic Meeting Place.
Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherers assembled at nearby Lough Boora about 6500 to 7000 BC.
An important Later Bronze Age hoard was found at Dowris in the 1820s. About 200 objects including, swords, spearheads, axeheads, gouges, buckets, a riveted cauldron were found, dating to about 700 BC. Horns and crotals were also found which led to intriguing research into Bronze Age music.
A large rock called the 'Seffin Stone' now in John's Mall has mysterious legendary connections. It may have been associated with the cult of a sun god or with Irish 'wild man' Fionn Mac Cumhail, though some have claimed it was the Umbilicus Hiberniae or Navel of Ireland, signifying the centre of the Country.
The monastery founded by St Brendan at Birr about 550 AD was at the centre of a significant cluster of early Christian monasteries in the Irish Midlands including Seir Kieran, Clonmacnoise, Clonfert, Kinnitty, Gallen, Leamonaghan, Mona Incha, Roscrea, Lorrha and Terryglass.
Adomnan, abbot of Iona, summoned ninety-one eminent leaders to Birr in 697 AD to guarantee Cain Adomnain, a law for the protection of women and children in a warrior society.
A synod at Birr in 1174 AD was recorded in an Irish Annal.
Birr was one of the principal strongholds of the O'Carrolls of Ely O'Carroll during the medieval period. Ely O’Carroll was attached to the King’s County (now County Offaly) in 1605.
The Plantation of Ely O’Carroll was implemented about 1620 and the Parsons family, subsequently Earls of Rosse have held Birr Castle almost continuously from then up to the present day.
Armies raided, defended, conquered, besieged and burned Birr during the ferocious disputes of the seventeenth century.
Birr acquired its elegant Georgian architectural features in two main phases during the mid eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The nineteenth century saw the building of the churches, convent, workhouse, Birr Barracks at Crinkill, the railway (part of which was ‘stolen’), distilleries, printing works and developments at Birr Castle which included the Great Telescope. The early nineteenth century also saw the building of Moorpark House, later to become County Arms Hotel.
