Ireland has long been known as a land of dreamers and schemers, but it is only now with the explosion of technological advancement that the Celtic Tiger has come of age. However this success did not come overnight. For many decades the imagination and intellect of Irish men and women have played a part in preparing the ground for this generation to profitably expand our Celtic imagination. Nowhere can this be better understood and enjoyed than at Birr Castle Demesne where young scientists of the future can voyage with the inventors, thinkers and dreamers who went beyond the possible to push back the boundaries of discovery.

The recently opened Galleries of Discovery are dedicated to the significant achievements of members of the Parsons’ family and to their contemporaries in the fields of Astronomy, Photography, Engineering, Microscopy, and Botany.

The Galleries use videos and scaled moving models to explain how the third Earl of Rosse built one of the greatest telescopes in the world in the middle of Ireland during the nineteenth century. He did this using local labour and machines which he designed and built to overcome each challenge as it emerged. Further Galleries focus on the observations and discoveries made with what became known as the "Leviathan of Parsonstown".

The wife of the third Earl was a pioneer photographer. Ironically, it was photography which sounded the death knell for the great telescope, as it was not suitable for celestial photography. The science of photography was in its infancy in the mid nineteenth century. This meant that photography was more akin to chemistry than art. Photographers were forced to prepare their own sensitised plates. Mary, Countess of Rosse was equal to the challenge.

The fourth Earl of Rosse’s achievements in astronomy also feature, as he designed and constructed at Birr an apparatus which made the first accurate estimate of the temperature of the Moon.

The engineering galleries focus on Charles Parsons, the inventor of the steam turbine, which revolutionised marine transport. His invention, though, was not easily accepted by a sceptical admiralty in the 1890s. His experimental vessel, the "Turbinia", powered by his steam turbine and twin screw propellers, performed figures of eight around Queen Victoria’s fleet in 1897. The point made, the Admiralty set about employing his technology, which then became standard for both naval and merchant vessels.

In the Demesne of Discovery outside the Galleries can be found: the "Leviathan" now fully restored; a water turbine which adequately met the whole town of Birr’s electricity requirements at the start of this century; a fountain powered by simple gravity; and a suspension bridge built nearly two hundred years ago that has stood the passage of time, as well as the passage of six generations of the Parsons family.