Birr is a town in County Offaly, Ireland. Between 1620 and 1899 it was called Parsonstown, after the Parsons family who were local landowners and hereditary Earls of Rosse. 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 gardens, home of the Parsons family, and also site of the Leviathan of Parsonstown, the largest telescope in the world for over 70 years, and a large modern radio telescope.
Earl of Rosse is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of Ireland, both times for the Parsons family.
William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, was an English astronomer, naturalist, and engineer. He was President of the Royal Society (UK), the most important association of naturalists in the world in the nineteenth century. He built several giant telescopes. His 72-inch telescope, built in 1845 and colloquially known as the "Leviathan of Parsonstown", was the world's largest telescope, in terms of aperture size, until the early 20th century. From April 1807 until February 1841, he was styled as Baron Oxmantown.
Lawrence Parsons, 4th Earl of Rosse, KP, FRS was a member of the Irish peerage and an amateur astronomer. His name is often given as Laurence Parsons.
William Douglas may refer to:
Birr Castle is a large castle in the town of Birr in County Offaly, Ireland. It is the home of the 7th Earl of Rosse and his family, and as such the residential areas of the castle are not open to the public, though the grounds and gardens of the demesne are publicly accessible, and include a science museum and a café, a reflecting telescope which was the largest in the world for decades and a modern radio telescope.
Leviathan of Parsonstown, or Rosse six-foot telescope, is a historic reflecting telescope of 72 inches (1.83 m) aperture, which was the largest telescope in the world from 1845 until the construction of the 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker Telescope in California in 1917. The Rosse six-foot telescope was built by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse on his estate, Birr Castle, at Parsonstown.
This is a list of those who have served as Lord Lieutenant of King's County.
William Clere Leonard Brendan Parsons, 7th Earl of Rosse, is an Anglo-Irish peer. He is also 10th Baronet Parsons, of Birr Castle.
William Edward Parsons, 5th Earl of Rosse was an Irish peer and British Army officer. He was known as Lord Oxmantown until 1908.
Lawrence Parsons, 2nd Earl of Rosse, known as Sir Lawrence Parsons, Bt, from 1791 to 1807, was an Irish peer.
Sir William Parsons, 4th Baronet of Birr Castle was an Irish politician and baronet.
Richard Parsons, 1st Earl of Rosse (1702–1741), Freemason and a founder-member of the Hell-Fire Club, 2nd Viscount Rosse of Bellamont co. Dublin, Baron Oxmantown, 3rd baronet.
The Lord High Treasurer of Ireland was the head of the Exchequer of Ireland, chief financial officer of the Kingdom of Ireland. The designation High was added in 1695.
There have been four baronetcies created for people with the surname Parsons, two in the Baronetage of Ireland, one in the Baronetage of England and one in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. One creation is still extant as of 2008.
The Rt Hon. Mary Parsons, Countess of Rosse, was a British Irish amateur astronomer, architect, furniture designer, and pioneering photographer. Often known simply as Mary Rosse, she was one of the early practitioners of making photographs from waxed-paper negatives.
Lawrence Harman Parsons, 1st Earl of Rosse, known as The Lord Oxmantown between 1792 and 1795 and as The Viscount Oxmantown between 1795 and 1806, was an Irish peer and politician.
Sir William Parsons, 1st Baronet of Bellamont PC (Ire), was one of the Lord Justices of Ireland, serving from 1640 to 1643. He also served as Surveyor General of Ireland and was an undertaker in several plantations. He was known as a "land-hunter" expropriating land from owners whose titles were deemed defective.
Sir John Cole, 1st Baronet was an Anglo-Irish politician. London He was the second son of Sir William Cole MP, a key figure in the Plantation of Ulster, and his second wife Catherine Parsons, daughter of Sir Lawrence Parsons of Birr Castle, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) and Anne Malham. William was a Londoner, the only son of Emmanuel Cole, from a family which originated in Devon. Sir Arthur Ingram, the investor, landowner and politician was a cousin through William's mother, Margaret Ingram.
Sir Lawrence Parsons was an English-born barrister, judge and politician in seventeenth-century Ireland, who enjoyed a highly successful career, despite frequent accusations of corruption and neglect of official duty. His success owed much to the patronage of his uncle Sir Geoffrey Fenton, of his cousin by marriage Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, and of the prime Royal favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. He was the ancestor of the Earl of Rosse of the second creation. He rebuilt Birr Castle, which is still the Parsons family home.
