Use it or lose it – that's the message from a landlord who's relaunching a struggling pub in a last-ditch effort to save it.

Having been run as a private members’ club since the end of the pandemic, The Wheatsheaf in London Road, West Malling, reopened its doors as a public house on Wednesday, in the same week it went up for sale.

Landlord Terry Cronin says he is still hoping to turn the business around and avoid selling it, but the bleak financial situation could force him to walk away from the pub his family has run for three decades.

"I don't want to see it go because we've had that for 31 years this month," he said. "My mum and dad bought that in 1992, and now me and my sister have got it, so there's a lot of emotion and a lot of family pride that goes into that pub. I haven't just done this on a whim.

"I love that pub, but at the end of the day, it's a business. If it ain't working, there's only so many times you can throw money at it – and if it's a bottomless pit, you've just got to hold your hands up. I'd hate to do it and I'd be gutted to leave it."

If he does have to leave, it will end a family trade that started long before the Cronins owned the Wheatsheaf, when the family was based in London. And it would be the end of an era for Terry.

"I was born in the pub trade – literally," he added. " My mum and dad had the Cock and Monkey pub in Rotherhithe, and that's where me and my sister Sally grew up in the 80s. And before that in the 70s was The Blacksmiths which is still there downtown, right on the Thames."

Terry had gone on to work in the City for a money broker, but after getting made redundant in 2000 he spent a year travelling before deciding to spend some time at the new family business in West Malling.

"I had no intention – and especially my sister had no intention – of running a pub," he recalled. "We had no interest in it whatsoever, but having been born in the trade and been in it, I took over and said ‘look I'll do the bar for the first year’, and then it went from there.

“All of a sudden I was running this and doing the orders. I knew how to change barrels since I was a kid, and I was cleaning the pipes when I was 10, so that wasn't a problem.

“Then my sister came down and we went from there.

"I loved it when I came down. Back in the 90s and early 2000s it was lovely around here. Every pub was busy, and it was buzzing."

During that time the Wheatsheaf built up a strong reputation as a place to watch sports or enjoy a roast dinner, with tables regularly booked out to capacity through the weekend.

It was also well known for its monthly comedy nights.

But the story of the following years is a familiar one around the country, with the pub's trade suffering a slow decline in adverse economic circumstances before falling off a proverbial cliff when the Covid pandemic hit.

As with many bars and restaurants, government assistance kept the business on life-support during lockdown but when that ended the pubs had to struggle back to their feet in a worsening economic climate.

"It was just a case of 'get on with it'," said Terry. "It's alright saying 'get on with it' but everything else goes through the roof – all of our utilities, everything just doubled and some stuff trebled.

“The breweries put their prices up, and it just went on and on. I said to Sal 'ok how about we do this members thing?' It was only for a year. I just thought I'd try something new."

That was the beginning of 2022, but despite a refurbishment and hopes the Wheatsheaf could build its membership on a reputation as an 'old-school' pub, new trade failed to materialise.

The same year also brought the loss of Terry's mum, and by the start of summer this year he had hit a low point, realising it could be time to leave the family business behind.

"It took me a long time to get my head around it," he said. "At the beginning of June, I wasn't in a good place at all and my wife was worried about me.

"It's not been easy at all. I'm not trying to give a sob story, but everyone knows what that pub means to me."

Nevertheless, if he realised the membership plan hadn't worked, it was also the members who might just have come up with a new rescue strategy – reopening the Wheatsheaf's doors to the public and bringing Terry's idea of launching a smokehouse – which had been his 'exit plan' – into the pub itself.

"They all sat down with me the other Monday," recalled Terry. "I thought ‘what's going on here?’

“I thought I was having an intervention. I thought 'I ain't drinking, hang on'. But no they sat down with my sister and said ‘we've come up with an idea here’ and they've come up with a plan.

"So I said ok, if this works then the plan going forward is to push the business.

"My passion is cooking so we're starting up the smokehouse – briskets, burgers, southern fried chicken, slow-cooked belly of pork – I make it all myself.

"They're saying 'you get the restaurant going, and we'll liaise with (bar manager) Mikey and take this off your hands for a while'.

“I'm open to that, no probs. So there's a group of them that have really been good. They've stepped up and they don't need to.

"At the moment it's still a business whether I'm selling it or not. If someone comes along with a good offer, I could be thinking however good that business does I'd be stupid to turn that down, although I can't see that happening at the moment, especially in this climate."

Meanwhile, he remains committed to keeping the Wheatsheaf as a traditional pub and hoping to find new devotees from the nearby Leybourne Chase housing development and beyond.

"They're few and far between now, those sort of bars," he said. "To me a pub, growing up, was a place where you had a drink that did food, not the other way around.

“You go in there to have a beer and a chat, watch a bit of football, watch a bit of boxing of a night, play your darts, play your pool, and then 'oh fancy a bite?', 'yeah ok'. Not the other way around.

"It's the other way around now; they've got to go somewhere that does food and does all this. 'I'll have a cappuccino and a latte'.

“That's not a pub to me, that's not a boozer. Maybe I should have broadened my horizons... but should I?"

His old members for a start would hope the answer is no, and they'll be hoping that a new influx of trade will help the Wheatsheaf flourish again.

And Terry's message to customers old and new is a simple one: “If you want it to stay, use it.”

The Wheatsheaf is now open as normal. An official relaunch is planned for next weekend.