Enthusiastic Harry Potter fans forced the diversion of a $825 million electricity link between Wales and Ireland that had been due to pass through the makeshift “grave” of Dobby the house elf, it has emerged.

The £430 million Greenlink links Britain’s National Grid to Ireland via 200-kilometre cable between County Wexford and Freshwater West and was completed in February last year.

But the extraordinary decision to change the route in mid-project – because of a wave of pressure from fans of the Harry Potter series – has only just been revealed.

“Actually we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave,” project manager Simon Ludlam told The Energy Revolution podcast at the weekend.

The remote Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire is where Dobby’s death was filmed for the Potter movies.

The site has since become a shrine to the character, who died in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part One. The BBC reports up to 75,000 fans visit the grave every year.

They also leave tributes to Dobby, including painted stones that have grown into a substantial pile. There are also socks and even a headstone bearing the words “Here lies Dobby, a free elf”.

Tributes from Potter fans have piled up at the beach. Photo: BBC

Ludlam told the podcast he had travelled to Freshwater West for a television interview about where the massive cable would come ashore. He said it would run beneath the sea and beach before continuing through the dunes and towards the road.

“Once we’d agreed with all the authorities, with all the landowners and the people who own the beach, the local residents, how we’d make landfall, I remember BBC Wales said, ‘Could you come down and just do a quick thing?’,” Ludlam said.

“We 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.”

Ludlam said a colleague said callers were furious that “apparently we’re going to go straight through Dobby’s grave”.

“I said ‘Dobby, who’s Dobby? I don’t know Dobby?’.

“I said ‘he’s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious what are you talking about?’

“[The colleague] said ‘no it’s very, very serious’.”

Ludlam said he then discussed with planners “exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn’t go anywhere close to Dobby’s grave”.

“A lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby’s happy,” he said.

Dobby’s grave wasn’t the only significant site the Greenlink project had to work around.

An archaeological dig had earlier uncovered the rim of what was believed to be an inverted Bronze Age collared urn dating from around 1700 to 1500BC. Such vessels were commonly associated with human burials.

There was no change to the pipeline’s path for the genuine archaeology.

The 500-megawatt Greenlink has since been completed. It has carried electricity between Wales and Ireland since February 2025, powering 380,000 homes.

No figure has been given for the cost of changing the route, and there is no suggestion that the intervention delayed the finished project.

Nor is the cable diversion the first time Dobby’s grave has been saved.

In 2022, Britain’s National Trust agreed it could remain following a consultation. But it urged visitors not to leave souvenirs on the environmentally sensitive beach.