Richard Laurence Millington Synge, 28 October 1914 - 18 August 1994

Abstract There is no doubt that Dick Synge was a very exceptional person. According to his family, this first showed itself in the memory of an event, which occurred when he was only fifteen months old, when he was allowed to play with the gravel outside the church during the christening of his sister. The Synge family consisted of two branches, one of which, the Irish Synges, contained the famous playwright, J.M. Synge. They trace their ancestry back to a Thomas Millington also called Singe of Bridgenorth (born ca. 1500). The English Synges were also certainly present in Bridgenorth in the early 16th century. The Irish and the English Synges are known to have been in touch with one another in the 18th century. The English Synges remained as fairly prominent citizens of Bridgenorth until the late 19th century. Both branches of the family used the name Millington as a Christian name. For unknown reasons the spelling of his surname, Sing or Synge, varied. Family legend has it that the origin of the name Millington, which was used by both branches of the family as a Christian name, was that they had lived at Millington Hall in the parish of Rostherne (Cheshire). Because a member of the family sang so beautifully before King Henry VIII he was told to take the name of Singe. One of Dick Synge’s great uncles, born in 1863 and always known as ‘Uncle Millington’, became Warden of St Edwards School, Oxford. Among Synge’s recent ancestors was his grandmother who was a Thornely. All the Thornelys were mildly academic and quietly eccentric or unconventional in one way or another, so that Synge is thought to have inherited much from them, even including his height. Two generations further back was William Roscoe, M.R, who helped to abolish slavery and whose art collection still forms the nucleus of the Walker Art Gallery; he also founded the Liverpool Botanic Gardens. Synge came from a distinguished family which included his grandfather, A.M. Sing, who was President of the Liverpool Athenaeum and a Governor of the Liverpool Collegiate School.