John Bellairs made his first visit to England in the early 1960s and it's hard to discern at this point whether the overseas holiday sparked his anglophilia or if this "affliction" was already full-blown. British authors like Shakespeare and Dickens dotted his bookshelves and Bellairs, much like his fictional alter ego Professor Childermass, had more than a passing interest in British history, literature, and antiquity.

Bellairs literally immersed himself in British culture when he moved to England – specifically the Bristol area – for six months of 1967. During this visit there was time for sightseeing - key landmarks like Bristol's Clifton Suspension Bridge and Cabot Tower, the Roman ruins in nearby Bath, and other side trips to Glastonbury, Wells, and, indeed, London. But Bellairs had set aside time on this trip for writing, too. From this "unique atmosphere" came the story of Prospero – first drafts of what would go on to become The Face in the Frost

Roughly 60 miles southwest of Bristol is the tiny village of Horton in Somerset County, which may not have been on his tour per se, but we can’t help but point out that the village is home to its own Five Dials Inn.

In Face, Five Dials is a "lonely inn" in the Southern Kingdom near the Brown River border [96-7]. It was also the name of an illusionary village created by Melichus to distract, ensnare, and unnerve his rival Prospero [86] that gets its name from a prominent pentagonal clock tower. By contrast, the Inn that stands in Horton (we’ll told it’s really within the parish of nearby Ilminster, 4 miles away and has an Ilminster telephone number) derived its name from its location near the convergence of five roads.

A. J. (Jim) Renouf, one of the inn's patrons, wrote to contributor Patrick Cuff in July 2001 that the inn was "originally called the Horton Inn, and believed to be the haunt of highwaymen. The name was changed sometime about the First World War, although I've not been able to date the change positively."

Another area resident, Gordon Denman, also believes the Five Dials Inn received its name before the First World War. "It is mentioned in The Mynster of the Ile which was published in 1904: 'In 1830 ... this commissioner also planted the 'Five Dials', that is, he also marked out the roads which radiate in different directions from the top of Broadway Hill (now Horton). This spot, 243 feet above the sea, is on a level with the weathercock of St Mary's Church. The 'Five Dials Inn was soon reared; Mr Farthing the keeper therof....'"

The architectural design of various streets converging in one central area is not uncommon in Britain. The most famous of these is the similarly named area, Seven Dials, in London’s West End. Seven Dials was constructed in the 1690s to mark the location where seven (originally six) road intersected; a hexagonal pillar stood at the crosspiece with a sundial on each face and the seventh sundial the pillar itself. The area was designed with well-to-do citizens in mind but by the 19th Century it had become a notorious slum; Charles Dickens, one of Bellairs' favorite authors, described the area in Sketches by Boz that “a stranger who finds himself in The Dials for the first time will see enough around him to keep his curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable time."

Nearly 90 years later, the setting was used in Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery. While the original pillar was removed, a replica has since been erected and most of the area has been redeveloped into thriving commercial area. Interestingly enough London appears to have had its own “Five Dials,” as documented by social worker and author Maud Alethea Stanley in her book, Work about the five dials (1878), and as seen in the name of a small literary magazine, Five Dials.

It could be argued then, that Bellairs combined the name of the Horton inn with the geographic landmark (the six-sided sundial) to create his Southern Kingdom spectral stopover.