Tilling (Sussex) Tilling Green, in the fictional county of Ledshire, appeared in one of Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver stories, "Poison in the Pen" (1955). 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). Tilling takes its name from the River Tillingham which flows through Rye. Benson himself moved to Rye in 1918, where he lived in Lamb House, former home of the novelist Henry James. Benson was mayor of Rye 1934-7 and was elected Speaker of the Cinque Ports in 1936. Tilling first appeared in "Miss Mapp"
Tilling-Stevens Motors Ltd (TSM) in 1932, but were again renamed Tilling-Stevens in 1937, before World War II had broken out. Tilling-Stevens was still manufacturing buses after World War II, with a large order built in 1947/1948 for export to Hong Kong (China Motor Bus (108) & Kowloon Motor Bus (50)). Tilling-Stevens also produced trolleybuses. An existing customer in respect of petrol-electric buses, Wolverhampton Corporation, decided to replace trams with trolleybuses on one route of their Corporation Tramway and asked Tilling to supply them. The result was an adapted version of the hybrid "TS6" model with electrical components by BTH of Bath,