054 Metheun Street Hastings street view 2017
Reason for the name
Field Marshal Paul Sanford Methuen, 3rd Baron Methuen GCB GCMG GCVO DL (1 September 1845 – 30 October 1932) was a British Army officer. He was General Officer Commanding the 1st Division in the Second Boer War.
Methuen Street is in the suburb of St Leonards, Hastings. Methuen Street was named at a meeting of the Hastings Borough Council on the 19th of December 1912, along with Wolseley, Rodney and Buller Streets.
Hastings Borough Council had a policy at that point in time of naming streets after English Generals and Admirals.
Authors: Helen Gelletly, Cherie Flintoff, Madelon van Zijll de Jong, Katrina Barrett
Field Marshal Paul Sanford Methuen, 3rd Baron Methuen GCB GCMG GCVO DL (1 September 1845 – 30 October 1932) was a British Army officer. He was General Officer Commanding the 1st Division in the Second Boer War.
Educated at Eton College, Methuen served two years as a cornet in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and then joined the Scots Fusilier Guards. He was promoted over the next few years to Brigade Major and saw active duty on the staff of Sir Garnet Wolseley at Amoaful in 1873 during the Third Anglo-Ashanti War. Further roles and promotions followed.
Methuen served in the expedition of Sir Charles Warren to Bechuanaland in 1884 to 1885, where he commanded Methuen's Horse, a corps of mounted rifles. He was promoted to lieutenant-general on 1 April 1898.
Methuen was given the command of the 1st Division on the outbreak of the Second Boer War. He got to South Africa in November 1899 with orders to relieve Kimberley but initially just expelled the Boers from Belmont and Graspan. The modern challenges of the South African War were a far cry from the training and experience in Queen Victoria’s “small wars”.
Methuen suffered both defeats and successes during the war. His greatest defeat was at the Battle of Magersfontein, one of the three British disasters in "Black Week" in December 1899 that led to the despatch of Lord Roberts to South Africa.
After Magersfontein, Methuen remained in the field and fought well, with many successes for the next couple of years.
In the beginning of February 1900 it was announced that New Zealand would send a fourth contingent, approximately three squadrons, but so great was the enthusiasm and so plentiful the supply of candidates that the contribution was increased to two full battalions of Mounted Rifles, known as the 4th and 5th New Zealand Contingents. They sailed at the end of March, and disembarked at Beira at the end of April. The two New Zealand contingents took part in the attempt to relieve Colonel Hore at Elands River.
In Lord Roberts' telegram of 18th August he spoke of an engagement at Buffelshoek, in which Carrington and Lord Erroll drove back the enemy in the vicinity of Elands River on 16th August, the day on which Hore was relieved by Lord Kitchener from the south. Lord Roberts remarked, "The New Zealanders particularly distinguished themselves.”
General Carrington left the seat of war about the end of August. After that both contingents saw much fighting under Lord Methuen, General Douglas, and other leaders in the Western Transvaal.
New Zealand and Australian forces have been pictured during Lord Metheun's operations in the district after the fall of Klerksdorp itself, fighting near Klerksport in the Transvaal, about 160 kilometres from Johannesburg.
Methuen was captured by the Boers at Tweebosch on 7 March 1902 after being shot twice in the battle and also breaking his leg after his horse fell on him. Boer General Koos de la Rey treated him well. Methuen’s treatment of Mrs de la Rey earlier in the war was gentlemanly, when he had been ordered to burn her house due to suspicion she had been providing food and shelter to her husband, but accepted her pleading to take the horses and cattle and not destroy her house. Methuen was released due to his injuries, with General de la Rey providing his personal cart to take Methuen to hospital in Klerksdorp. The two allegedly became lifelong friends as a result of this.
The public view of his loss and capture was positive. While many of the unseasoned troops fled the field in the face of the Boer charge, he showed courage and perseverance. The unit he was in held their ground strongly, even though supplied with insufficient men who were mostly raw recruits against superior Boer forces. The general British view was that his tactics were sound and his personal action was heroic. Kitchener wrote in an official despatch that Methuen had ‘done more than most officers towards maintaining throughout this campaign the high standard for personal courage, modesty and humility, which characterises the British Army’.
Despite some setbacks, Methuen also had successes. He continued to be well regarded, and was given more responsibilities and further promoted over the next few years.
He became General Officer Commanding-In-Chief in South Africa in April 1908 and Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Natal in January 1910 before being promoted to Field Marshal on 19 June 1911.
Methuen helped raise the standards of training of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 and was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Malta in February 1915, a post he held until he retired in May 1919.
He was Governor of Malta while the Māori Contingent were there waiting to go to ANZAC Cove in Gallipoli, and was behind a decision to have a colonial officer take charge of a large convalescent camp - Captain F. Burton Mabin (later Lieut.-Colonel) of the Maori Battalion was seconded for that duty.
Lord Methuen was considered as a man of great courage, fighting in the lines even with his high rank, and as chivalrous, kindly, and generous with high standards of duty.
