Tag Archives: Birr Castle

The Enkindled Spring


This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.



I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.



And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.


The Enkindled Spring by D.H. Lawrence
Photographs of Balrath House, County Meath (balrathcourtyard.com)

Taking the Cure

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A corner cabinet in Bedroom No.15 at Birr Castle, County Offaly. This is also known as the Conroy Room since it contains memorabilia associated with Sir John Conroy, quondam Comptroller to Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent: in the same year Victoria came to the throne, Conroy’s son Edward eloped with Lady Alicia Parsons, daughter of the second Earl of Rosse. On a table beneath the cabinet is a box holding a 19th century travelling pharmacy, including such supposed cures as Tincture of Rhubarb and Paregoric Elixir. The latter was an opiate first developed in the early 18th century as a cure for asthma.

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Return of the Native

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On a table in the Gothic Saloon of Birr Castle, County Offaly, a porcelain figure looms over Cecil Beaton’s photograph of a former chatelaine Anne, Countess of Rosse. Home since 1620 to fifteen generations of the Parsons family, in the past couple of years Birr Castle has welcomed back Patrick, Lord Oxmantown, his wife Anna and their young children who were previously living in China. You can read more about their return to the ancestral seat in an article I have written for the May issue of Architectural Digest. For more, see http://www.architecturaldigest.com/decor/2015-05/birr-castle-tour-county-offaly-ireland-article

Starting at the Bottom

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The base of a window and its curtain in the Gothic Saloon at Birr Castle, County Offaly. Lit by three arches offering views down to the river Camcor and a vaulted ceiling supported by slender shafts, this wonderful room dates from the early 19th century when it was created by the second Earl of Rosse assisted by an otherwise almost unknown architect called John Johnston who, according to Mark Girouard (writing in Country Life, March 1965) did ‘little more than make working drawings based on the sketches of his employer.’