On 10th December 1871 the body of Emily Gardner, 18-year-old daughter of the landlord of the Early Dawn beerhouse in the High Street, was found dumped in a ditch in Wellesley Road on the edge of what is now Pittville Park. At that time Wellesley Road was an unnamed service lane running along the back of Clarence Square and Wellington Square, locally called The Lover’s Lane. After Emily was found there it became known as Murder Lane.
It wasn’t difficult to identify the culprit. Frederick Jones, a 21-year-old baker from Swindon Place, had been obsessed with Emily for some time but she reportedly wasn’t interested in him. That night he had offered to walk her home, but in the darkness of the lane he attacked her with a razor taken from the kitchen of the pub where she lived. He ran straight home and told his parents and neighbours what he’d done, but he insisted that she had attacked him with the razor first and that he’d only struck her in self-defence. The jury didn’t believe him; he was convicted of murder and hanged at Gloucester Gaol in 1872.
Around 1911 Cheltenham Borough Council named the street Wellesley Road in an attempt to get rid of its unfortunate associations but some older residents of the town still call it Murder Lane.
The cache is just off Wellesley Road, at the junction of Clarington Mews. (This is not the site of the murder, but there is an interesting historic boundary stone nearby.)