About the town » Birr, Uibh Fhaili, Leinster, Ireland

Birr is a town in County Offaly, Ireland. It was formerly called Parsonstown, after the Parsons family who were local landowners and hereditary Earls of Rosse, and renamed at some time between 1891 and 1901. The town lies within a parish of the same name in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Killaloe. Birr is a designated Irish Heritage Town with a carefully preserved Georgian heritage. Birr itself has graceful wide streets and elegant buildings. Many of the houses in John's Place and Oxmantown Mall have exquisite fanlight windows of the Georgian period. The town is known for Birr Castle and its gardens, home of the Parsons family and also the Leviathan of Parsonstown which was for a time the largest telescope in the world.