Published: 11:47 PM, 11 August 2026
Harry Potter fans force £430mn cable reroute to spare Dobby's 'grave’
Harry Potter fans have forced a multimillion-pound power cable between the UK and Ireland to be rerouted, after complaining it would desecrate the "grave" of Dobby, a fictional house elf. Dobby was laid to rest on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire of Wales in the film “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”.
Fans of the wizarding series regularly leave stones reading "Here Lies Dobby" at the site, despite being asked not to by landowner the National Trust, which considers the beach an ecologically sensitive area, The Guardian reports.
The £430 million Greenlink interconnector, linking the National Grid to Ireland, was initially set to pass through the site of the “grave”, project manager Simon Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast.
Fans learnt of the plans after Ludlam pointed out during a BBC interview where the 125-mile (200km) cable to County Wexford would go underground at Freshwater West.
"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," he said.
Ludlam said he had no idea who Dobby was and grew confused by the calls flooding in, recalling a colleague telling him: "Apparently we're going to go straight through Dobby's grave."
The firm then brought in planners to chart a new route avoiding the supposed grave.
"A lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby's happy," Ludlam said.
