A fictional house-elf proved more powerful than energy engineers. The route of a power cable linking the UK and Ireland had to be urgently redesigned after a flood of calls from Harry Potter fans. The reason? An underground section of the route was originally planned to pass directly through the spot where fans had created an improvised burial site for Dobby on a Welsh beach.
The story was told by Greenlink project manager Simon Ludlam on the Energy Revolution podcast. The £430 million interconnector links the British and Irish power grids and stretches for 200 kilometers. The cable was originally planned to come ashore at Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire — the same location where Dobby is buried in the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The problem emerged after Ludlam revealed the cable’s planned landing point in a BBC interview. Within a couple of weeks, the company began receiving hundreds of calls. The manager admitted that he had no idea who Dobby was. A colleague explained that the proposed route ran directly through the grave. Ludlam’s response was almost theatrical: the character was fictional, the book was fictional, and the entire story was fictional. The answer was clear: no, this was considered very, very serious.
The project team was forced to bring in designers and develop a new route around the site, where fans have been leaving stones inscribed with messages such as “Here lies Dobby” for years. The National Trust, which owns the land, has long asked visitors not to leave stones because the beach is an environmentally sensitive area. The tradition, however, has proved difficult to stop.
In the end, the cable was routed very close to genuine Bronze Age burial sites, including burial urns containing human remains. Ludlam summed up the outcome briefly: the project is moving forward, and Dobby is happy.
The story of how a fictional elf outmaneuvered a multimillion-pound energy project has already become industry folklore. It also serves as a reminder that infrastructure planning requires more than geological maps — cultural landscapes can matter just as much.
Source: The Guardian
Image: Sam Cuthbertson / Alamy
