London: Fans of the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise have been asked not to leave socks at Freshwater West Beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, which is the memorial site for the fictional house elf Dobby. According to Variety, this comes after fans left so many socks at the Dobby memorial that it started to become an environmental concern for Freshwater West Beach.
This is the same location where Dobby’s death scene was filmed in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1’. Following this, a memorial for Dobby was erected by fans and they started leaving socks at the site as a tribute because in the movie the house elf was freed from indentured servitude after his evil owner, Lucius Malfoy, is tricked into gifting him a sock.
However, recently when environmental officials from the conservation charity National Trust Wales conducted an eight-month review of the site, they decided to allow the memorial to stay standing, although a warning to fans has now been issued, reported Variety. As per the outlet, in a statement, the National Trust Wales said, ‘The memorial to Dobby will remain at Freshwater West in the immediate term for people to enjoy. The Trust is asking visitors to only take photos when visiting the memorial to help protect the wider landscape’.
In their review findings, they noted that ‘items like socks, trinkets and paint chips from painted pebbles could enter the marine environment and food chain and put wildlife at risk’. ‘While we’re delighted that so many want to visit, we have to balance the popularity of the site with impacts on the sensitive nature of the beach and wider environment, and pressure on the facilities and surrounding roads’, Jonathan Hughes, an official with National Trust Wales, added, according to Variety.
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