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heritage · Sunday 2 August 2026 · 1:00pm - 6:00pm 
The Rosse Drawing Exhibition
At Birr Castle, Copper Tree Gallery · Birr Castle Demesne, Birr, Co. Offaly
At Birr Castle, Copper Tree Gallery · Birr Castle Demesne, Birr, Co. Offaly
The Rosse Drawing Exhibition brings a set of historic astronomical drawings by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, to the Copper Tree Gallery at Birr Castle from Sunday, 2 August to Sunday, 9 August 2026. Parsons made the drawings by hand between 1845 and 1866, working at the eyepiece of the Great Telescope he built in the castle grounds. Some of the sketches, which show the spiral structure of nebulae for the first time, are believed to have influenced Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night. The exhibition is part of the visual arts programme for Birr Vintage Week and Arts Festival.
The centrepiece is Parsons’s drawing of what is now known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, made using the 72-inch reflecting telescope, nicknamed the Leviathan of Parsonstown, which was the largest in the world for more than 70 years after its completion in 1845. Recording what he saw through the eyepiece by hand, Parsons captured the spiral form of a nebula in a level of detail no one had drawn before, a genuine turning point in the history of astronomy and a document from a period just before photography took over that job. The drawings hang in the Copper Tree Gallery, a short walk from the Great Telescope itself and the Historic Science Centre, so it is possible to see the instrument that made the images and the images it produced on the same visit. The exhibition runs alongside a wider spread of Vintage Week exhibitions in venues across Birr town, including the Masonic Hall, the Old Cinema and Oxmantown National School.
Birr Castle Demesne is on the edge of Birr town, a short walk from Main Street and the town’s public car parks. The Copper Tree Gallery is inside the castle grounds, close to the Great Telescope and the Historic Science Centre. Birr is about an hour’s drive from Athlone, Tullamore or Portlaoise.
The exhibition is a good reason to spend an afternoon in Birr, a Georgian town built around the castle demesne, with Oxmantown Mall’s tree-lined approach leading up to the theatre and the castle gates. There is more to see and do across Co. Offaly.
Heading to Birr Castle, Copper Tree Gallery in Birr? Offaly has plenty more to see. Read the Birr area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.
In town for Birr Castle, Copper Tree Gallery? These Dublin tours book out in summer.