Tilling (Sussex)

Tilling is a fictional coastal town, based on Rye, East Sussex, in the Mapp and Lucia novels of Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940).

In the 1980s, following the adaptations by Gerald Savory (1909–96) of Benson's novels for London Weekend Television (1985–86), in which Tilling was referred to as "Tilling-on-Sea" (a form unknown in the books), two pastiches by Tom Holt (b.

The Friends of Tilling organise an annual gathering in Rye each September for devotees of Mapp & Lucia and E F Benson's other comic novels.

In 2014 the BBC made a new three-part series adapted by Steve Pemberton (who also played Georgie Pillson) from the original Mapp and Lucia novel.

In Rye a lookout, presented by Benson when he was mayor in 1935, stands towards the River Rother and Camber, with a plaque noting that its donor had "immortalised" the town as Tilling through his books.

(In Savory's adaptation for television, McConnell was introduced to Elizabeth Mapp by her intoxicated husband, Major Mapp-Flint, as "a veritable pilling of Tillar".)

[4] A village called Tilling Green, in the fictional county of Ledshire, appeared in one of Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver stories, Poison in the Pen (1955).