Synge and Wicklow

Although John Millington Synge was born in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin and he grew up in the city, there was always a sense of attachment to Wicklow, where his family had been landowners.  Each summer his widowed mother Mrs Synge would take him and his four siblings for extended holidays in the county in rented houses close to the Synge estate of Glanmore: Castle Kevin, Avonmore House, one summer in Tomriland, the famous Wicklow cottage with its chink in the floorboards where Synge was to write Riders to the Sea.

It was on these summer vacations, that John Synge walked and cycled round the hills and glens of Wicklow and came to know them intimately.  He fished in the mountain lakes, climbed Lugnaquilla, and stopped to talk to the people he met on the roads.  One area in particular attracted him, the beautiful valley of Avonbeg starting up in Glenmalure, where he set the haunting The Shadow of the Glen, down through the cross-roads of Greenane, setting for The Well of the Saints, to the village of Ballinaclash, scene for the farcical Tinker’s Wedding.  Though his visits to the Aran Islands gave him his breakthrough as a writer, Wicklow was home territory for John Synge, and his plays and his atmospheric essays about the county are the lasting tribute to its inspiration for him.

Professor Nicky Grene                                                                              

     Email: syngesummerschool@iolfree.ie