Preservation efforts are underway to keep some of the tributes left at Ianto Jones’ Torchwood shrine in Cardiff.
The shrine, left as a tribute to the fictional character from the Doctor Who spin-off, and as a wider lament over the show’s demise, was said to be taken down last month (April 2026), but prop-maker James Sutton has said that, with the permission of Mermaid Quay and BBC Studios, he’d managed to salvage “a few smaller dressing pieces” and hoped to come back for more substantial parts.
He wrote on Instagram:
“The idea came to me last week after spotting parts of the Hub entrance still visible behind the remains of Ianto’s Shrine. I was amazed some of the original details were still surviving nearly 20 years later, and with redevelopment plans underway, I realised there was a real chance they could simply be scrapped…
“Sadly, the larger pieces couldn’t be removed this time, but hopefully we can return for them later. I was especially hoping to save the newspapers in the windows, but they’re now so fragile that the glass itself seems to be the only thing holding them together. Fingers crossed the windows can eventually be salvaged intact.”
These newspapers include a heading featuring Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, played by Annette Badland, from the Doctor Who Series 1 episode, Boom Town.
A bench and commemorative plaque have now been installed in Cardiff Bay where the shrine was originally located.
The Radio Times is also reporting that a documentary — starring Gareth David-Lloyd, who played Ianto — was filmed, primarily for Carol-Anne Hillman, who’s looked after the shrine over the last decade, and will further be released by 17/11 Pictures. It’s preliminarily called The Man Who Never Lived.
