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"
Thomas Tilling Company (BAT), had interests in nineteen bus companies, with Tilling being a co-owner of eleven of them, and at the same time was partly owned by Tilling itself. To simplify the arrangement, BAT was reconstructed with a new title, Tilling & British Automobile Traction Ltd (TBAT), and Tilling exchanged its shares in the various operating companies for an increased shareholding in the new company. The railways of Britain had grown significantly and many companies had developed bus services. In 1923, most of these "pre-grouping" companies merged to form four mainline companies: Great Western Railway; Southern Railway; London, Midland and Scottish