Harry Potter fans have forced a £430 million underwater cable to be relocated away from the filming location for Dobby’s grave, featured in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1.
The Greenlink interconnector links the National Grid to Ireland, travelling 125 miles from the Pembrokeshire beach to County Wexford.
Project Manager Simon Ludlam told The Energy Revolution podcast the cable was initially “going to go straight through” the house elf’s fictional grave, but fans made “hundreds of calls” to the firm. “Actually we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave,” he said on the podcast.
Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire once played host to Shell Cottage, the fictional home of Dobby the house elf. Warner Bros. chose the stunning Welsh beach as a filming location for the death of the much-loved character in the penultimate film in the series.
Ever since then, Potter fans have travelled to the beach to leave stones and mementos, including socks (a key theme in the character’s journey) in tribute to the character. The National Trust cares for this stretch of coastline, and in 2022 agreed the “grave” could remain in place following a consultation, but urged visitors not to leave souvenirs because of the ecologically sensitive nature of the site. The surrounding area is home to large grey seals, harbour porpoise and some of the largest populations of seabirds in the world, so the risk of those items entering the sea and affecting these delicate ecosystems is high.
Simon Ludlam, founder of Etchea Energy, first mentioned the plans in a BBC News interview, which was subsequently picked up by Potter fans who then submitted hundreds of appeals. “We did the shot, we finished, I went back to London, and they then aired it a couple of weeks later,” he told The Energy Revolution podcast. “And we got hundreds of calls, I mean, hundreds of calls.”
Although authorities, landowners and locals had been informed of the plans of the interconnecting cable, Dobby’s grave hadn’t been raised until Potter fans got in touch. The cable was rerouted thereafter. “A lot of people were very happy about that,” Simon said.
