When the fairies file an objection

When dealing with planning or infrastructure projects regularly, you soon get used to the usual crowd of characters involved: surveyors with notebooks, ecologists with binoculars, archaeologists with trench plans, contractors with hi-vis, and solicitors with agreements to sign. 

Occasionally however, there is another, less common stakeholder: folklore and superstition. Or, in one now infamous case, a fictional house-elf with a very committed fanbase.

The recent example at Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire is a gift to anyone who has ever sat across the kitchen table from an infrastructure promoter and wondered whether the route they’re proposing really does need to cross through the best land on the farm.

If you didn’t hear, the Greenlink interconnector, a major electricity link between Ireland and Great Britain, was reportedly adjusted after Harry Potter fans objected to the route passing through the unofficial memorial known as “Dobby’s grave”.

The site marks the filming location associated with Dobby’s death in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, where visitors have long left stones, socks and other heartfelt tributes.

From a landowner’s perspective, this raises intriguing possibilities. If a fictional house-elf can prompt engineers to go back to the drawing board, then one wonders whether every landowner should start some mystical rumours about a feature on their land ‘just in case’?

The above example is by no means the first eyebrow raising incident in modern memory.  There is the celebrated Latoon fairy bush in County Clare, Ireland: a solitary whitethorn beside the M18 motorway, said to be significant in local fairy lore.

In 1999, folklorist Eddie Lenihan campaigned to prevent its removal during road construction, warning of the consequences of disturbing a fairy meeting place. Whether one regards the eventual road alignment as deference to tradition, engineering common sense, or a very practical desire not to annoy half the country, the result is wonderfully visible: modern traffic rushing past while one small tree sits, undefeated, in its appointed place.

For landowners, this is both comforting and mildly irritating. Comforting, because it proves that even the largest schemes can sometimes accommodate a change in direction. Irritating though, because when a farmhouse access, water trough or productive field corner is in the way, the phrase “unavoidable engineering constraint” can arrive with remarkable speed. 

Iceland offers perhaps the most administratively advanced version of the phenomenon. There, the huldufólk, or “hidden people”, are often associated with rocks, lava fields and other landscape features. Road and bridge projects have reportedly been delayed, adjusted or handled with particular caution where locals believed elf dwellings might be disturbed.

One much-discussed example involved the Gálgahraun lava field near Reykjavik, where campaigners objected to a road scheme partly on the basis of an “elf church” rock; the dispute reached Iceland’s courts, and the rock was ultimately relocated.

There is also the wider tradition of fairy paths — invisible routes said to run between fairy forts, thorn trees, springs, burial mounds, hills and other significant places.

Folklore records from Ireland, Scotland and parts of northern Europe suggest that throughout history, buildings, walls and even everyday domestic layouts were sometimes adapted so that these unseen routes were not obstructed.

These stories are amusing because they sit so awkwardly beside the seriousness of infrastructure delivery. We need grid connections, interconnectors, roads, fibre, reservoirs and renewable energy.

Yet, across Britain and Ireland, development has often had to navigate around features that are not necessarily magical, but feel close enough: ancient trees, standing stones, burial mounds, holy wells, churchyard yews, local memorials and historic field patterns. Some have formal protection; others rely on community feeling, bad press and the very human instinct not to be the person who cut down “that tree”. Folklore is rarely written into the compulsory purchase order… but it has a habit of appearing regardless.

The Country Land and Business Association has long argued that landowners should be engaged early, treated fairly and properly compensated where infrastructure is imposed on private land.

The folklore examples listed above make the same point in a somewhat humorous and roundabout way: if promoters can re-route for a fairy tree, a film memorial or a place with strong public feeling, then surely they can also take seriously the less headline-friendly realities of farming operations, access, drainage, soil structure, biosecurity, sporting interests, tenancy arrangements and long-term reinstatement.

In other words, shouldn’t the people who know the land best, be engaged with and listened to before the route becomes fixed?