IN THE HEART OF THE MIDLANDS...THE CASTLE OF BIRR

Dear International Living Reader,

The Irish are not great at towns. Their countryside is among the most beautiful in the world...but, historically, they've shown little aptitude for urban planning. Cities and villages, generally, are undistinguished--with a few exceptions, one of which we discovered this weekend.

Birr is a quiet, sleepy place that was planned and built to complement the castle that shares its name. Gothic Birr Castle, dating to the early 17th century, perches above the river, and, unlike most castles in this country today, continues to be inhabited by the family that built it (the Rosse family).

All roads in Birr lead to its castle, and running straight into the castle's original gates is a wide mall lined on both sides with modest and appealing Georgian townhouses. It's the nicest street I've come across in this country outside Dublin, broad, tidy, and tree-lined, with all those solid Georgian doors topped by lacy fan-shaped windows, most in good repair.

You can't tour the castle (remember, the Rosses are in residence), but you can wander the gardens. There are more than 100 acres of them, some planted more than 300 years ago. Certainly in spring and summer, they're more colorful, but this past Sunday morning, bundled up against this unseasonably cold Irish January, we spent two hours walking along the river and exploring the formal and kitchen gardens. The oldest and tallest (32 feet) box hedges in the world are here, plus specimens of rare plants and shrubs from all over the world...along with old roses and mammoth rhododendrons. We and a French family with two small children had the place to ourselves.

Kathleen Peddicord

P.S. We visited Birr and environs in the company of a couple of longtime International Living subscribers who, six years ago, bought a three-story Georgian-era house in the nearby tiny town of Eyrecourt and have spent the past three years renovating it (to a delightful standard). The couple, Americans, moved to Ireland from Thailand ("to slow down," they told us), where they had spent nearly a decade building and renovating resort hotels. We are grateful to them, for if not for their invitation to visit this weekend, we would not have discovered this part of Ireland, County Offaly, in the West Lakelands, just about smack dab in the center of the country, the heart of the Midlands.

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