BBCHarry Potter fans succeeded in diverting a multimillion-pound power link between the UK and Ireland after they complained it would disturb a “memorial” to Dobby the House Elf.
The £430m Greenlink interconnector links the National Grid to Ireland via 125-mile cable between County Wexford and Freshwater West, a beach in Pembrokeshire where the death of fictional character Dobby was filmed in the Potter films.
Project manager Simon Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast the cable was originally “going to go straight through” the tribute, before fans began leaving his firm “hundreds of calls”.
“Actually we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave,” he said.
Ludlam, founder of Etchea Energy, said a BBC News interview about the project had turned into a public relations nightmare after fans got wind of what was to happen.
He told the podcast that during the filmed interview he had pointed out where the cable would go underground, saying: “We did the shot, we finished I went back to London, and they then aired it a couple of weeks later.
“And we got hundreds of calls, I mean hundreds of calls.”
Getty ImagesHe said a colleague told him the nature of the calls, and that “apparently we’re going to go straight through Dobby’s grave”.
“I said ‘Dobby, who’s Dobby? I don’t know Dobby?’
“I said ‘he’s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious what are you talking about?’
“[The colleague] said ‘no it’s very, very serious’.”
Ludlam said he then discussed with planners “exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn’t go anywhere close to Dobby’s grave”.
He added: “A lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby’s happy.”
The Bronze Age remains the cable went close to were mentioned in Pembrokeshire council planning documents about the power link.
It said archaeological trenches dug near the route of the underground cable “contained the rim of an inverted pottery vessel whose fabric suggests a Bronze Age collared urn circa 1700-1500BC, typically associated with human burial”.
The cable diversion is not the first time Dobby’s grave has been saved.
In 2022 the National Trust agreed it could remain in place following a consultation, but urged visitors not to leave souvenirs.
Fans were asked not to leave socks on the mock grave, made of pebbles with messages written on them, because the beach was environmentally sensitive.
