It’s not work, it’s home!
Our home is the stunning heritage town Birr, located right in the middle of Ireland. Birr is a quintessentially classic, small, friendly and safe Irish town, about 130km west of Dublin. The town is well known today for both its outstanding Georgian architecture and Birr Castle Demesne. However, a significant settlement at Birr has existed from at least the sixth century, when St Brendan reputedly founded an early medieval monastery. This monastery developed as a prestigious foundation, with its most famous associations being to the Synod of Adomnáin and the ninth century Macregol Gospels. Today Birr is home to a thriving community, possessing all modern amenities that visitors might want to enjoy. Since 2020 we have refurbished Birr’s ‘Old Town Council Offices’, a lovely 19th century vernacular building, as our headquarters and classrooms. We also use the old Town Hall, dating from 1833, and a lovely walled courtyard to deliver both our community and third level programming in the town.
10 great things about Birr
- Birr is one of the most centrally positioned towns in Ireland, so is a perfect base to explore the rest of the country!
- Birr is regularly voted as one of the most picturesque towns in Ireland, with fabulous Georgian buildings, streets and tree-lined malls and avenues.
- Birr is a ‘home of hurling’. The first ever All-Ireland final was played in Birr in 1888, with the town since winning four club All-Irelands, the second highest total in Ireland.
- Birr Castle has been home to the Parsons family since 1620. They have pioneered achievements in photography, engineering, astronomy and much more – even successfully calculating the temperature of the moon in the mid nineteenth century.
- The Leviathan, the world’s largest telescope until 1917, was built in Birr in the 1840s.
- Birr has an active Arts scene with no less than five festivals every summer – the largest being Birr Vintage Week, which has been running for over 50 years.
- Birr is a thriving community with no less than 60 voluntary groups and clubs. We have been working with many of these for years, most notably with Birr 20|20 on some of our larger projects.
- The town has three surviving medieval monuments, which we are helping to research, conserve and re-open to the public.
- One of these monuments, St Brendan’s Monastery, was the location of the Synod of Adomnáin in 697 when the ‘The Law of the Innocents’ the world’s first human rights legislation was passed.
- Birr is surrounded by raised bog, an important landform that could play an important role locally in helping combat both the climate and biodiversity crises.