About us

Established in 1920, Frank Halls & Son is a family run boatyard located on the East coast of Essex at Walton on the Naze. We are a five minute walk from the shops and a ten minute walk from the railway station with regular connections to Colchester and London.

We have an excellent team of skilled staff that have allowed the business to expand and push itself forward. Time has seen the traditional wooden boat being replaced by G.R.P, but through our craftsmen we have retained the skills and knowledge of building and repairing wooden boats. We have also obtained new skills for repairing modern fibreglass ones.

Services we offer

We offer our customers a full boatyard service from painting and finishing, osmosis treatment, stainless steel, metal fabrications, moorings, hauling out, hard-standing, storage, engineering, blast cleaning, electronics, rigging to buoyage and beacon work.

Over the years we have grown from not only looking after the needs of the independent yachtsman and his boat but to becoming contractors for many organisations.

These include Trinity House, we maintain their vessels for work and important dignitaries, The Environment Agency, Tendring District Council (offshore Seamarks), the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and Anglican Water.

Our heritage

The firm Frank Halls and Son was established in 1920 by Frank Halls and Mr Claude Brookes, it was first known as Brooke & Halls. They started by building small rowing and sailing boats, then came the Gem class, of which quite a large number were built for members of the Walton & Frinton Yacht Club to race.

In the middle to late 1920s they built a number of the 18 foot class, again to race at the yacht club and two of these boats still survive to this day.
In the late 1920s to early 1930s, Mr Brookes left the firm to start an Ironmonger business. At this time Frank took his son Alf into the business and it became Frank Halls & Son, as it is today.

Frank died in 1934 and Alf carried on with yacht outfitting until WW2 started. The firm shut down in 1940 when Alf served as a full time Lifeboat man in the war. In 1945 he was joined by his son Derek, they then started to fit out yachts that had been badly neglected during the war years. Derek was then joined by his brother John in 1955, when they started building rowing and sailing dinghies.

In 1959 they started building the Kestrel class of which 36 were made, then various other craft, fishing boats and two berth day cruisers. In the early 1970s the firm started finishing off Trintella 29 and 30 and Victory 40, a lot of which went for export at the time. In 1980 Frank's great grandsons Trevor and Christopher joined the firm which they run today.