Tilling is a fictional coastal town, based on Rye, East Sussex

Rye, East Sussex

Rye is a small town in East Sussex, England, which stands approximately two miles from the open sea and is at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede...

, in the Mapp and Lucia

Mapp and Lucia

Mapp and Lucia is a collective name for a series of novels by E. F. Benson, and is also the name of a television series based on those novels.-The novels:...

novels of Edward Frederic Benson

Edward Frederic Benson

Edward Frederic Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist and short story writer, known professionally as E.F. Benson. His friends called him Fred.-Life:E.F...

 (1867-1940).

Town in the novels of E F Benson

Tilling takes it name from the River Tillingham

River Tillingham

The River Tillingham is a river in the English county of East Sussex.Unusually for that county the Tillingham flows from west to east. It meets the eastern River Rother near the town of Rye....

 which flows through Rye. Benson himself moved to Rye in 1918, where he lived in Lamb House, former home of the novelist, Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

. Benson was mayor of Rye 1934-7 and was elected Speaker of the Cinque Ports

Cinque Ports

The Confederation of Cinque Ports is a historic series of coastal towns in Kent and Sussex. It was originally formed for military and trade purposes, but is now entirely ceremonial. It lies at the eastern end of the English Channel, where the crossing to the continent is narrowest...

 in 1936.

Mapp and Lucia

Tilling first appeared in Miss Mapp (1922) and subsequently in The Male Impersonator and Desirable Residences (short stories of 1929), Mapp and Lucia (1931), set between June 1930 and the spring of 1931, in which Emmeline Lucas ("Lucia") and Elizabeth Mapp clashed for the first time, Lucia's Progress (1935) and Trouble for Lucia (1939). The novelist Susan Leg, the subject of Secret Lives (1932), re-appeared in Trouble for Lucia.

In the 1980s, following the adaptations by Gerald Savory

Gerald Savory

Gerald Savory was an English playwright and screenwriter specialising in comedies.The son of actress Grace Lane , he was educated at Bradfield College and worked as a stockbroker's clerk before turning to the stage , first as an actor then a writer.His first work for movies was writing dialogue for...

 (1909-96) of Benson's novels for London Weekend Television (1985-6), in which Tilling was referred to as "Tilling-on-Sea" (a form unknown in the books), two pastiches by Tom Holt

Tom Holt

Tom Holt is a British novelist.He was born in London, the son of novelist Hazel Holt, and was educated at Westminster School, Wadham College, Oxford, and The College of Law, London....

 (b.1961), based in Tilling, were published by Macmillan: Lucia in Wartime (1985) and Lucia Triumphant (1986). Holt also produced a short story, Diplomatic Incident, for the former Tilling Society in 1998 and another called Great Minds for the Friends of Tilling in 2006. The Friends of Tilling organize an annual gathering in Rye each September for devotees of Mapp & Lucia and E F Benson's other comic novels. Another Tilling book Major Benjy was written by Guy Fraser-Sampson and is published by Troubador.

The first Lucia book, Queen Lucia, was published in 1920. It was followed in 1927 by Lucia in London. Benson's The Freaks of Mayfair (1916) provided the genesis of some of the characters of Tilling. Specifically, "Aunt Georgie", a bachelor with a penchant for embroidery, provided the model for George Pillson, who, as with Lucia, with whom he entered into a platonic

Platonic love

Platonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...

 marriage in Lucia's Progress, originally lived at Riseholme

Riseholme

Riseholme is a fictional Elizabethan village in the Cotswolds in the “Lucia” novels of Edward Frederic Benson . It is thought to have been based on Broadway, Worcestershire.- Lucia and Riseholme :...

 (thought to have been modelled on Broadway

Broadway, Worcestershire

Broadway is a village and civil parish in the Worcestershire part of the Cotswolds in England.Often referred to as the "Jewel of the Cotswolds", Broadway village lies beneath Fish Hill on the western Cotswold escarpment...

) in the Cotswolds.

In the final Benson Lucia book Trouble for Lucia Tilling seems to be no longer in Sussex but in Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

.

Topography

Lamb House was the model for "Mallards", the home initially of Elizabeth Mapp and subsequently of Lucia, who re-named it Mallards House.

Cynthia & Tony Reavell (1984) E F Benson: Mr Benson remembered in Rye, and the World of Tilling contained a map of Tilling that drew on references in the books and the layout of Rye itself. A similar plan was reproduced in Holt's novels. In some instances, the street names of Tiling and Rye coincided - for example, High Street (the location of Godiva Plaistow's house, "Wasters") and West Street ("Quaint" Irene Coles' "Taormina

Taormina

Taormina is a comune and small town on the east coast of the island of Sicily, Italy, in the Province of Messina, about midway between Messina and Catania. Taormina has been a very popular tourist destination since the 19th century...

") - but there were some variations: Mermaid Street became, in Tilling, Porpoise Street (where Algernon and Susan Wyse lived); Market Road was Malleson Street (Woolgar & Pipstow, the estate agents); and Watchbell Street was Curfew Street (the Trader's Arms).

Tilling Gazette

The local newspaper in the TV version was the Tilling Gazette and in the book Lucia's Progress it was the Hastings Chronicle but in Trouble for Lucia, this inexplicably became the Hampshire Argus (editor, Mr McConnell). (In Savory's adaptation for television, McConnell was introduced to Elizabeth Mapp by her intoxicated husband, Major "Benjy" Mapp-Flint, as "a veritable tillar of Pilling".)

Imports from Riseholme

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

Eric Partridge

Eric Honeywood Partridge was a New Zealand/British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang. His writing career was interrupted only by his service in the Army Education Corps and the RAF correspondence department during World War II...

 suggested that in fact the term had orginiated in America in the 1880s .

Lucia's celebrated recipe Lobster à la Riseholme

Lobster à la Riseholme

Lobster à la Riseholme was a famed gastronomic dish served by Lucia in two of the Mapp and Lucia novels of E F Benson ....

 was first served in Tilling in Mapp and Lucia.

Riseborough

Benson's Mrs Ames (1912) was set in Riseborough, which also bore a resemblance to Rye. Though this antedated Benson's move to Rye, he already knew the town well, having, for example, first visited Henry James at Lamb House in 1900 .

Patricia Wentworth: Tilling Green

A village called Tilling Green, in the fictional county of Ledshire

Ledshire

Ledshire was a fictional county in the north of England in two novels by Susan Pleydell, Summer Term and A Young Man's Fancy . It was also the name of a county in the Miss Silver novels of Patricia Wentworth....

, appeared in one of Patricia Wentworth

Patricia Wentworth

Patricia Wentworth was a British crime fiction writer.She was born in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India . She was educated privately and at Blackheath High School in London. After the death of her first husband, George F. Dillon, in 1906, she settled in Camberley, Surrey...

's Miss Silver

Miss Silver

Miss Silver is a fictional detective featured in 32 novels by British novelist Patricia Wentworth.-Character:Miss Maud Silver is a retired governess-turned-private detective. Like Miss Marple, Miss Silver's age and demeanor make her appear harmless. Some admire the character, believing that "while...

stories, Poison in the Pen (1955).