What happened to promise of 20 jobs and rejuvenated high street in Wick?
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Questions are being asked about the promise of local jobs after a business entrepreneur and apparent major investor in Wick disappeared from the town with empty shops left behind.
Theodora Kennedy Hunt (Teddy Hunt) now trades under the name Theodora Tennessee Hawthorne for her Dr Goat dairy business which is registered at Morayston House at Dalcross near Inverness but in November 2022 the John O'Groat Journal covered the glitzy open day event for her beauty clinic with the headline 'Business owner bucks trend of shops closing in Wick and will employ 20 staff'.
Northern Lights Aesthetics was highlighted as a one-stop shop for everything beauty that would focus on "high standards of hygiene and treatments with specialist products for skincare". At the open day event on November 12, 2022, Ms Hunt said she was "passionate about filling all of the empty shops on High Street" and getting more people into Wick to breathe life into the town. "Given the specialism of the work I've done before, I will be able to make it work," she declared.
After the opening – which saw many visitors come in to learn about the new face on Wick's High Street – the shop appeared to lie idle and Ms Hunt was later seen removing items from it.
The business seems to have never traded from the High Street premises and Northern Lights Aesthetics Ltd was dissolved on August 15, 2023, with net assets of £1, according to Companies House records.
This appeared to be the same story for Valhalla Bar and Eatery, a cocktail bar and music venue further down High Street, which opened to a fanfare on Christmas Eve 2022 with musicians playing at the venue and drinks being served.
Many locals remarked on the "shoddy" state of a sign outside and that much of the interior appeared unfinished, with plaster broken off walls. The promises of 20 local jobs quickly foundered.
Valhalla was open on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve 2022 but it soon closed in 2023 and several young people were observed removing articles from the premises. Christopher Window worked at Valhalla briefly and felt Ms Hunt was "winging it" and did not quite understand the complexities of running a bar. "At one point she said, 'If you don't know what you're doing just try and make it up'. She had no idea how to price anything," he claimed.
Valhalla Bar and Eatery Ltd still has an active status at Companies House but changed its name to Drunken Hound Brewery Ltd in April last year and then back again to its original name three months later. Ms Hunt's business address was given as Bankhead Cottage on Bankhead Road in Wick but she is not believed to be living locally now. Her filing records for Dr Goat show she is using Morayston House as her registered trading address.
The 33-year-old has also been involved in property services and worked as an unregistered estate agent with Theo Hunt Property Services Ltd in Sheffield (company dissolved Feb 1, 2022); House of Highland in Wick (company dissolved via compulsory strike-off Nov 16, 2021); Thistle & Hunt Ltd (dissolved Jan 2, 2024); and was recently operating a franchise with RE/MAX Property Hub in Cornwall.
Her RE/MAX profile states: "Successfully operating estate agencies and investing in property development over the past 15 years, you're in experienced hands with me and my team." She is understood to not be with RE/MAX now but is, however, running another estate agency called Rebellious Realty based in Inverness that only features one property for sale, a rundown shop in Barnstaple.
In 2021 Colin Merriott tried to sell his Latheron property through Ms Hunt's House of Highland company and sent a complaint about her to the Property Redress Scheme (PRS). "She came round and gave us a price for what the property was valued but it turned out to be way, way too high. We had problems getting in touch with her and it was just a nightmare. She screamed blue murder at the surveyor [over his valuation]."
All estate agents in the UK need to be a member of a redress scheme and after Mr Merriott contacted PRS he said he was told that House of Highland was expelled from it for "non-compliance".
Yvonne Fitzgerald, a fully qualified estate agent with offices in Wick and Thurso, took over three disgruntled clients – including Mr Merriott – from House of Highland. "I took three properties off her and they all experienced the same problem. All the people were really distressed," said Mrs Fitzgerald. "We got a phone call from a lady who was looking for her furniture six weeks after she had moved as she thought we might know where it was."
Last year, Ms Hunt was given support as a business and management student at UHI North Highland and was selected for a national entrepreneurship programme for her Dr Goat business. She said she wanted to "finalise the development of a goat milk stout and seaweed beer".
Ms Hunt did appear to be living in Wick for a period and stayed at several different addresses in the town. She also worked as an online tutor, ran Teddys Dessert Bars Ltd, which was dissolved on January 2 this year, and a still active furnishing company called Wild as Her Ltd which posted its capital assets as £1.
When we contacted her in March last year about the status of her Wick-based business ventures she claimed the "beauty clinic is having a new floor put down" and the "bar is reopening when the kitchen is sorted for food".
Ms Hunt declined to comment on the situation this month.
