Tilling (Sussex) "à la Riseholme" was first served in Tilling in "Mapp and Lucia". A railway station opened in Rye in 1851 and there are various references in the Benson books to a local station. In the BBC's 2014 dramatisation, townsfolk gather at a station depicted as "Tilling Town" in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Prince of Wales. In John van Druten's play, "Make Way for Lucia" (1948), based on Benson's novels, Lucia refers to Georgie Pillson and Major Benjamin Flint having breakfasted together in East Tilling. This appears to be the next station on the line between Tilling
Tilling (Sussex) into a platonic marriage in "Lucia's Progress", originally lived at Riseholme (thought to have been modelled on Broadway) in the Cotswolds. In the final Benson Lucia book "Trouble for Lucia" Tilling seems to be no longer in Sussex but in Hampshire. 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. 1961), based in Tilling, were published by Macmillan: "Lucia in Wartime" (1985) and "Lucia Triumphant" (1986). Holt also produced a short