Tilling (Sussex) for television, McConnell was introduced to Elizabeth Mapp by her intoxicated husband, Major Mapp-Flint, as "a veritable pilling of Tillar".) The custom in Tilling of saying ""au reservoir"" as a valediction (in place of the French" au revoir") was a feature of "Miss Mapp", although it became apparent in "Mapp and Lucia" that it had originated with Lucia in Riseholme. It was transported to Tilling by Elizabeth Mapp who had stayed one summer at the Ambermere Arms in Riseholme. The lexicographer Eric Partridge suggested that in fact the term had originated in America in the 1880s. Lucia's celebrated recipe Lobster
Thomas Tilling took over the bus assets of the BTC, and in 1967, BET sold its remaining bus interests to THC. The National Bus Company was formed a year later, mainly from former Tilling and BET subsidiaries. After nationalisation, the group remained as a management unit within the BTC with the following changes: Following nationalisation of Thomas Tilling Ltd's bus interests, a number of subsidiaries continued under separate ownership as the Tilling Group. Tilling Group was taken over by BTR plc in 1983. Companies within the Tilling Group post-1948 included: Thomas Tilling Thomas Tilling Ltd, later known with its subsidiary companies as