A £430m power cable between the UK and Ireland has been diverted from a Welsh beach after Harry Potter fans claimed it would desecrate the grave of Dobby, the fictional elf. The Greenlink interconnector, a 125-mile cable linking the National Grid to Ireland, was originally set to run between County Wexford and Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire.
Fan backlash leads to route change
The beach is famous among Harry Potter fans as the filming location for Dobby's burial scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part One. Since then, it has become a shrine, with fans leaving painted stones reading “Here Lies Dobby”, despite requests from the National Trust to stop due to the site's ecological sensitivity.
Project manager Simon Ludlam revealed on the Energy Revolution podcast that the company became aware of the fans' concerns after he mentioned the cable's route in a BBC interview. He said: “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.”
Company initially baffled by reaction
Mr Ludlam admitted he initially did not understand the fuss, saying: “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?’.” A colleague then explained the seriousness, telling him the cable would go “straight through Dobby’s grave”.
As a result, the company was forced to consider alternative routes that avoided the beach and the grave. Mr Ludlam noted: “A lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby’s happy.” He added: “We went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave.”
Bronze Age remains nearby
The Bronze Age remains mentioned by Mr Ludlam were detailed in Pembrokeshire council planning documents, as reported by the BBC. Archaeological trenches dug near the cable's route “contained the rim of an inverted pottery vessel whose fabric suggests a Bronze Age collared urn circa 1700-1500BC, typically associated with human burial”.
