Sweet Fanny Adams Virtual Cache
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The coordinates listed above are for the actual grave site of Fanny Adams. The cemetery is located off Church Street/Old Odiham Road and the entrance is across the street from Greenfields Ave.
This cache was once a traditional cache, but vandalism has made it necessary to convert it to a virtual. Instead of trading items, please bring flowers for Miss Adams' grave.
Fanny Adams is buried in Alton Cemetery. Though Miss Adams was brutally murdered, her legacy lives on and local townspeople still bring flowers to her grave. These flowers are watered daily by a sweet German lady who visits with her black poodle. It was also the townspeople who paid for and erected her grave marker.
Sweet Fanny Adams
From Hampshire, rising up through underlying beds
In verdant meadows west of Alton town,
The River Wey begins its double-headed path,
To Tilford first then, fortified, runs down
In tribute to the Thames's peaceful flow
At Weybridge, rolling onwards, stately, slow.
Around the fields and hillsides near its rural source
Grow hops, in gardens crossed with poles and wire;
Those hops which give full flavour to the Alton beer;
The hops which every year bring forth for hire
Whole families, who claim to find delights
In plucking gold dry fruit from twining heights.
The stranger to these parts might view a simple scene
Of peace between bucolic squires and madams,
But in tranquil settings evil passions lurk,
As seen by what befell poor Fanny Adams -
Playing with her sister and a friend
One August afternoon she met her end.
Young Fanny, only eight in eighteen sixty-seven,
And with full life to live one might expect,
Was taken, so the court was told, by Frederick Baker,
Local clerk, whose gruesome actions wrecked
The peace of Alton causing all to grieve,
And for his sins was hanged on Christmas eve.
No need to detail how the dismal deed was done,
Enough to say her body was dismembered,
Spread about the fields, or some say in the river,
Either way, an incident remembered
Not just locally, for through the press
The nation heard of Fanny's grim distress.
At just that time, as chance would seemingly dictate,
The Navy changed its issue to the tars
From salted tack to low-grade tins of chopped up mutton,
Giving rise to rumours in the bars
That Fanny's end and their unwelcome ration
Were juxtaposed in some unpleasant fashion.
And so the English language found a new expression
From this sorry tale of local pain,
And far beyond the confines of the Royal Navy
Folk would use poor Fanny's name in vain;
And even here in Alton I would say
Not many now would give a sweet FA!
Additional Hints
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