Torchwood shrine to be reborn as Cardiff artwork after years of fan devotion
A Cardiff Bay tribute to Torchwood character Ianto Jones is being transformed into a permanent artwork after months of uncertainty over its future. What began as a fan-built shrine 17 years ago is now moving from Mermaid Quay to a new home in the nearby Red Dragon Centre, carrying with it the layers of devotion left by visitors from around the world.
The shift comes after the shrine was marked for removal on health and safety grounds during maintenance work in the area. For the people who had tended it, decorated it, and treated it as a fixed part of the waterfront for nearly two decades, the announcement landed hard. The loss would have been more than cosmetic. For a cult television community, the shrine functioned as a public memory site, a place where grief, affection, and fandom had been physically gathered and repeatedly renewed.
Ianto Jones, played by Gareth David-Lloyd, became one of the most enduring figures in the BBC science-fiction spin-off Torchwood. After the character was killed off in 2009, fans began leaving tributes at what became known as Ianto’s Shrine. Over time, the informal memorial developed into a carefully maintained landmark rather than a temporary display. Carol-Anne Hillman had looked after it since 2017, spending hundreds of pounds on decorations and helping sustain the tribute as thousands of people came to see it.
The longevity of the shrine is unusual, but the psychology behind it is familiar. Fandom often produces the same durable rituals seen around public memorials: repetition, shared symbols, hand-written messages, flowers, tokens, and a place to return to when a story or a character has become personally meaningful. In this case, the shrine also reflected the significance of LGBT representation in a mainstream BBC drama, where Jack’s relationship with Ianto became one of the series’ defining emotional threads.
One sentence captures the abrupt reality of the change: the shrine could not remain in Mermaid Quay in its original form.
Rather than disappearing entirely, the tribute materials collected by Hillman are being incorporated into a giant portrait by Cardiff-based artist Nathan Wyburn. He said the work will be created with approval from Gareth David-Lloyd and will be displayed at the Red Dragon Centre. Wyburn described the project as a chance to preserve the spirit of the shrine while giving it a new artistic life. He also made clear that the idea was immediate once the original site was due to come down, and that his own attachment to Torchwood made the commission especially meaningful.
David-Lloyd has welcomed the plan with evident warmth. He described the original shrine as “weird, but also very flattering and lovely,” and said he was pleased that it will live on in another form. His reaction reflects the unusual feedback loop that can develop around long-running cult television: a fictional death generates a real-world memorial, and the memorial becomes part of the performer’s own understanding of the role’s impact. For an actor, that kind of response is rare. For fans, it confirms that the character moved beyond the screen and into shared cultural memory.
The new artwork also solves a practical problem. A shrine made from assorted fan tributes is fragile by nature, especially when exposed to weather, foot traffic, and redevelopment pressures. Turning the materials into a fixed portrait preserves the emotional content while removing the hazards that prompted the original decision to take it down. In effect, the tribute is being converted from an open-ended assemblage into a curated public piece. The result should be less vulnerable to the conditions that threatened the original site, while still retaining the traces of the fan community that built it.
Wyburn said he could not wait to unveil the piece, and David-Lloyd said he was pleased the project had been kept secret. The secrecy added a sense of ceremony to a tribute that has already lived several lives: first as spontaneous fan memorial, then as a carefully maintained shrine, and now as a permanent artwork anchored in Cardiff Bay’s cultural geography. The move also suggests a compromise that community members often hope for when informal landmarks face removal — not preservation in exactly the same form, but recognition that the site has become important enough to deserve continuity.
A spokesperson for Mermaid Quay had previously confirmed that the shrine would be removed while maintenance work continued, while also saying the aim was to work with the local community on a new tribute. That approach has now taken shape in a way that keeps the shrine’s history visible rather than erased. For fans, the result is less a goodbye than a transformation. The shrine that once stood as a living accumulation of private gestures will survive as art, carrying its origin story forward in a form meant to last longer than the waterfront display that inspired it.