Harry Potter Fans Force £430m Greenlink Undersea Power Cable To Reroute: Project Manager Simon Ludlam Reveals On Energy Revolution Podcast That Hundreds Of Calls Forced Cable Diversion At Freshwater West. Team Went “Quite Close To Real Bronze Age Remains” To Avoid Fictional Elf’s Shrine
According to The Guardian and CNN, the £430 million Greenlink interconnector; a 125-mile high-voltage cable linking the UK’s National Grid to Ireland’s County Wexford, was rerouted to avoid disturbing a fan-made shrine to Dobby the House Elf on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where the character’s death scene was filmed for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in 2010.
Project manager Simon Ludlam revealed on the Energy Revolution podcast that the original cable route ran directly through the shrine, where fans leave painted stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” and socks; a reference to the moment Harry tricks Lucius Malfoy into freeing Dobby by giving him a sock. After Ludlam pointed out the cable’s route during a BBC interview, hundreds of calls flooded in.
Ludlam, who admitted he had no idea who Dobby was, recalled his confusion: “He’s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious, what are you talking about?” His colleague replied: “No, it’s very, very serious.” The team then returned to planners and rerouted the cable entirely. “In the end we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave,” Ludlam said. “Dobby’s happy.”
The National Trust, which owns Freshwater West, agreed the shrine could remain in 2022 but has asked visitors not to leave socks for environmental reasons.
A fictional elf moved a £430 million infrastructure project. The Bronze Age urns had no such luck. Check out our previous coverage of world news on The Trusted Times.
