{"id":589891,"date":"2026-08-11T11:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T11:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/589891\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T11:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T11:46:09","slug":"harry-potter-fans-force-relocation-of-uk-ireland-undersea-cable-to-avoid-dobbys-grave-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/589891\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Potter fans force relocation of UK-Ireland undersea cable to avoid Dobby\u2019s \u2018grave\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Harry Potter fans have forced a new multimillion-euro power cable between the UK and Ireland to be relocated after complaining it would desecrate the \u201cgrave\u201d of Dobby, a fictional elf.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The character was laid to rest on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, in the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading \u201cHere Lies Dobby\u201d despite being asked not to by the land owner, the UK National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The \u00a3430 million (\u20ac503 million) Greenlink interconnector, which links the UK national grid to Ireland, was initially going to pass through the site of the \u201cgrave\u201d, the project manager Simon Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Fans became aware of the plans after Ludlam pointed out where the 200km cable to Co Wexford would go underground at Freshwater West during a BBC interview. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ludlam said he did not know who Dobby was, and became confused by the calls the company received, saying a colleague told him: \u201cApparently we\u2019re going to go straight through Dobby\u2019s grave\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cI said: \u2018Dobby, who\u2019s Dobby? I don\u2019t know Dobby?\u2019 I said: \u2018He\u2019s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious, what are you talking about?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He said the colleague told him: \u201cNo it\u2019s very, very serious.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The firm then enlisted planners to find a new route that avoided the supposed grave. \u201cA lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby\u2019s happy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In the end, he said, \u201cwe went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby\u2019s grave\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Bronze Age remains include urns associated with human burial. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harry Potter fans have forced a new multimillion-euro power cable between the UK and Ireland to be relocated&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270,904],"class_list":["post-589891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}