Mary, Countess of Rosse (1812-1885) was a pioneer in the then new technology of photography and the first woman to win the Silver medal award of the Royal Photographic Society of Ireland for her work in the 1850s.
Telescope Birr Castle
Mary Rosse’s interest in photography began at a time when photography was more akin to chemistry than art, and the highly stable emulsions which are common today had not yet been invented.
In the 1840s her husband had spent some time experimenting with the daguerreotype photographic process – an extremely hazardous process which used a potentially lethal combination of chemicals. Subsequently, Mary also experimented with various early photographic techniques, and used them to photograph the area around Birr Castle.
In 1983, the laboratory where she worked was rediscovered. It had lain untouched from the middle of the nineteenth century. Equipment and chemicals used by Mary Rosse, and many of her negatives and stereoscopic prints, were found on shelves and in wooden boxes.
Between 1996 and 1998 the restoration of Birr Castle Telescope got underway. Mary’s photographs, some of the earliest taken in Ireland, made it possible to accurately recreate the telescope as it would have appeared over 150 years ago.
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