Harry Potter fans had the last word! A 200-kilometer electrical cable is to connect the United Kingdom to Ireland, but its planned route sparked a mobilization that was anything but expected. The issue was its passage planned near Freshwater West, a Welsh beach made famous among fans of the wizard. The project risked crossing the site associated with the tomb of Dobby, the house-elf killed in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Facing hundreds of reactions, the project leaders ultimately altered their itinerary.
A fictional tomb turned into a pilgrimage site
At Freshwater West, in Pembrokeshire, the memory of Dobby regularly draws fans of the Harry Potter saga. It is on this beach that the scenes of the death and burial of this beloved character were filmed for the movie “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Since then, visitors come to lay pebbles on which they inscribe “Here Lies Dobby”, transforming the place into an improvised memorial. The phenomenon, however, is not encouraged by the National Trust, owner of the site. The organization thus asks visitors not to leave stones on the beach, considered an ecologically sensitive area.
It was in this setting that a large energy project was initially supposed to lay its cable. Named Greenlink, the interconnector is meant to enable the exchange of electricity between the British grid and Ireland. With a cost of 430 million pounds sterling, about 500 million euros, it would connect the British national grid to County Wexford, Ireland, over a distance of roughly 200 kilometers.
The problem became public when Simon Ludlam, the project manager, showed the BBC the spot where the cable would join the underground at Freshwater West. After the broadcast of the report, the company received hundreds of calls. “We did the filming, we finished, I went back to London, and then they aired it a few weeks later. And we received hundreds of calls, literally, hundreds of calls”, Ludlam recounted in the podcast Energy Revolution.
Archaeologists preferred Bronze Age remains
At first, the site supervisor did not understand the reason for this outcry. He then discovered that the calls concerned the character created by J.K. Rowling. A colleague explained to him: “Apparently, we are going to pass directly over Dobby’s tomb.” Simon Ludlam admits to having been puzzled: “Dobby, who is Dobby? I don’t know Dobby.” Before adding: “He’s a fictional character in a fictional book, everything is fictional, what are you talking about?”. But the scale of the reactions eventually convinced the project leaders to rethink their plan. “No, this is very, very serious”, a colleague reportedly told him.
The company therefore asked its planning teams to study another route to spare the place associated with Dobby. “Many people were very happy about that, and the project is moving forward now and Dobby is happy”, explained Simon Ludlam. The new route, however, does not mean the cable will avoid all trace of the past. Quite the opposite: according to the project manager, it will now pass near real Bronze Age archaeological remains. These include, notably, urns linked to human funeral practices.
“Nous sommes finalement passés assez près de véritables vestiges de l’âge du bronze, mais nous avons évité la tombe de Dobby”, a confirmé Simon Ludlam. Le paradoxe n’a pas échappé au responsable du projet : un chantier d’infrastructure de plusieurs centaines de millions de livres a été réorienté pour préserver un lieu associé à un personnage qui n’a jamais existé, tandis que son nouveau parcours se rapproche de sépultures humaines bien réelles…
