Hinckley Point [sic], on the Severn Coast, where an Atomic Power Station has been built within the last few years, was considered for centuries to be fairy-haunted land. The neighbourhood is full of pixy tales and beliefs, and the Quantock people are quite outspoken in their expectation of disaster for the intruding Power Station. It has had, and is still having, a more than reasonable number of setbacks. There have been some bad accidents which are freely ascribed in the countryside to its being built where it is. Usually, West Somerset people will not discuss their still-remembered fairy-beliefs, but in this case their speech is suggestive and indicates a full knowledge of the tradition.
[..]The elderly, and not so elderly, find a ghoulish pleasure in recounting the accidents and dangers attendant on its building. One or two grim watchers have tallied up deaths and near-deaths at one a year since the beginning of the desecration. Of these they say, ‘Ah! they won’t stop till there’s seven.’ Are these victims to placate the River Severn or the vengeful pixy-people? An answer to modern boasting abou the triumphs of science is: ‘You and I won’t be here come a hundred years time. But They’ll have ‘en! Hundred years be nothing to They. They can bide.‘
Watching Folklore Grow
R. L. Tongue
Folklore, Vol. 75, No. 2. (Summer, 1964), pp. 110-112.