Mine host of the old school...

John Vereker remembers them fondly from the '50s. "There were marvellous publicans in Essex in those days. Men with waistcoats and watchchains and huge double chins who could drink anybody under the table. But governments have snuffed them out."

Well, not quite. Here and there in Essex the traditional host survives and thrives in all his lustrous glory, even if you have to seek him out. The watchchain may have been exchanged for a VAT computer and the battle for business survival may have trimmed our landlord's figure and evaporated his double chins.

Yet that special mix of authority and bonhomie survives in a few legendary Essex figures, and the most legendary of them all may well be John Vereker himself, of the Bell Inn, Horndon-on-the-Hill.

John doesn't boom or roar, indeed his voice is quite gentle for a landlord and former sailor. Yet his presence is a solid one as he moves through the bar and restaurant, greeting old regulars, welcoming strangers, exchanging a joke or a reminiscence.

"When people come here, you've got to show that we love them," he says, simply.

The other key to being a classic landlord is even simpler. John is always there. He is almost as much of a fixture at the Bell as the inn's 550-year-old timbers, and he doesn't have woodworm.

"My wife says I know nothing about life beyond Horndon," he confesses. "But I might say, where's the need to? It's very seldom that I don't wake up at the Bell thinking: 'Wonderful, another day is starting!'"

There may be lost souls and folk who have failed to find their niche on top of Horndon Hill, but John Vereker isn't one of them.

The industry, nationwide, acknowledged his standing last month when they made the Bell of Horndon -- the 600-year-old hostelry to which John and his wife Christine have devoted their lives -- Pub of the Year.

John picked up his prize at the Licensee Industry Awards ceremony in front of the massed ranks of fellow licensees and catering industry bigwigs, and he chose his platform carefully.

He told them: "I'm still fuming about comments made by a certain food critic several years ago, who claimed that Essex is 'a desert of prawn cocktails.'

"I'm proud of where I live and I'm proud of what we do at the Bell. We are living proof that this area has a lot more to offer than some give us credit for."

This was vintage Vereker, the culinary Sir Galahad. He may be part of the catering industry establishment, mellow and successful, he still charges full-tilt at dogmas and prejudices when he gets the chance.

The Bell Inn is such an institution that you tend to forget how, 30 years ago, it was all quite different. The Bell, in those early days, was something of a radical, cutting-edge operation.

"People used to expect pie and chips at a pub," says John. "We set out to cook other things, and without using steak all the time. Not that I've anything against steak, or indeed chips. It's just that we thought there were other things you could do with food."

John may have been born to be a landlord, but he did not necessarily recognise it at first. Trained at Pangbourne Nautical Col-lege, he sailed to Africa and Australia as a junior officer with the Blue Star line. But when his ship hove to at Tilbury he would -- like many another good sailor --make his way up the hill to the Bell, "where they served a good pint".

There was also the landlord's daughter, Christine -- the reason he ultimately became a landlubber, though he claims: "I only married her to get a cheaper pint!"

John may have evolved effortlessly into a traditional mine host, but there are touches of other professions about him. There is something of the headmaster of a fine old public school in his patriarchal approach.

"We try to steep the staff in our traditions," he says. "They live in. It's something of a boarding school life for them, though hopefully in the nicest possible way."

The staff themselves eat well, with their own cook. "My wife says I care more for the staff than the family. But why should staff who are working with food put up with bloody awful cooking themselves?" queries John.

Then there is also John Vereker, priest. Everyone needs a pillar, someone they can turn to. The Church has declined but the landlord of a loca l- and the Bell is a local - still retains something of that function.

He is a listening post, a shoulder to cry on. In fact, he says:"My wife says I ought to have been a priest."

In the end, though, it isn't the collegiate principal or the confessional priest, but John Vereker, Dickensian landlord, doctor of good ale and attorney on behalf of fine food, who always comes to the fore.

He is conscious of his status as the latest in a long, long line of publicans, presiding over a resplendent tavern. And he sees no reason why the tradition of a fine old English inn should not continue for ever.

"An inn isn't a place for target markets or any of the other jargon of the marketing man," he says. "An inn should be for everybody, young and old, drinkers and diners, where all sorts can rub shoulders.

"An inn can have all the ancient timbers you can find, but in the end it is people who create the atmosphere."

As a manager and innovator, John's natural field is the future. Yet you can't be landlord of the Bell without a strong sense of history, too.

"Here, in the days of the medieval pilgrims, on their way to Canterbury, all the world passed through the Bell," he says, with pride -- for, with the Verekers in charge, all the world still does.

Of all the pilgrims who travelled through here, possibly the most significant arrived 40 years ago, in the shape of a young sailor who stopped for a pint and decided that, whatever place other pilgrims might journey to, he'd found his personal journey's end at the inn on top of the hill.

Cheers -- Bell publican John Vereker still enjoys a pint as much now as years ago when he was a young sailor docked in Tilbury and making his way up the hill to the Bell for "a good pint".

Picture: ROBIN WOOSEY

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.