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12/08/26: After a bit more digging, it seems that some have disputed the information behind this story. Dan Davies has questioned the details surrounding the reporting of Ludlam’s account, pointing out that a petition at the time didn’t mention “Dobby’s Grave”, nor does it seem to have been mentioned in the press coverage or planning application documents—which appear to show the cable’s position at the opposite end of the beach.
An undersea power cable linking the UK National Grid to Ireland has been forced to relocate, after Harry Potter fans complained it would go through Dobby’s grave. You know, Dobby the house elf. The fictional character created by J.K. Rowling.
Fans became aware of the desecration of Dobby’s memorial after a BBC interview with project manager Simon Ludlam, who detailed plans to put the cable underground at Freshwater West beach in Wales (via The Guardian). This just happens to be the location where Dobby’s fictional death was shot for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, and the site of a fan-made shrine.
According to Ludlam, speaking on The Energy Revolution podcast: “We did the [BBC] 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.”
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Ludlam doesn’t appear to be a Harry Potter fan, as he expressed confusion over all the fuss created by the location. A colleague told him “Apparently, we’re going to go straight through Dobby’s grave.”
“Dobby, who’s Dobby?” Ludlam recounts. “He’s a fictitious character in a fictious book…. what are you taking about?” His colleague told him: “Not, it’s very, very serious.”
The good news is that Ludlam’s company, Etchea Energy, then enlisted planners to reroute the £430 million cable project, avoiding the spot where the fictional house elf fell. The bad news is that the cable now runs close to a site of genuine historical importance instead.
“We went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains,” Ludlam says. “But we avoided Dobby’s grave.”
Well done, Harry Potter fans. The bizarre shrine to your fictional character’s death remains intact, but now the cable runs quite close to proper archaeological trenches. Which, it should be pointed out, have previously revealed pottery linked to actual human burial.
The history of this collection of islands being what it is, I suppose you can’t put anything underground without running into something important—but I’d argue the site of Dobby’s fictional demise doesn’t really count. The memorial is also a massive nuisance to locals, because people keep leaving socks on it. And messages of genuine grief, apparently.
Still, RIP, you strange little creature. May your final resting place remain bulldozer-free, and may you continue to hamper useful infrastructure projects until the end of time. Because humans are freaking weird, man.
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