Heron takes flight

Customers left grounded as boat firm [Heron Boatbuilders] folds - Yorkshire Post

Twelve would-be boat owners have been left high and dry after a Yorkshire company closed, leaving huge debts. Heron Boats Ltd, based in Mirfield, near Huddersfield, is no longer trading and the Yorkshire Post understands its owner Jon Hunt has gone to live in France.

The article makes it sound like Heron was a fly-by-night operation.  The owner might well have flown this time, and some customers have certainly lost out.  But there have been a number of good narrowboats out of the company's workshops, and some of them even have good websites, namely Snecklifter, Gypsy Rover and Ronarosa. 

Mike on Snecklifter has a few thoughtful words to say about the collapse, kinder than the news story.   By the way, you can tell a Heron boat by the tell-tale 'heron' cutout on the rudder.  I always thought that was a neat sort of branding. 

I sought out the Heron Boatbuilders website.  It's now nominally offline (a '403 forbidden' message) but the webmaster reckoned without my terrier determination, and I've tracked down most of the pages and saved them to my own computer, in case anyone's interested.

Comments

[R smith]

the post above is not a comment by Richard smith !

[Peter Reed]

I am about to buy a 60 foot Heron Narrowboat named Tunnel Vision built in 2001
I would appreciate any information that would help me to decide if its the right decision.

Thanks, Peter Reed

[Richard Smith]

Has also anyone spared a thought for the employees? Who have also lost their livelyhood?? If anyone knows where John Hunt is sure we would all like to know! As i personally think this man should do time for what he has done. I unfortunately had the priviledge of working for this man.