Barbourfields
Named after H. R. Barbour, a colonial-era mayor, or after a settler landowner of the same name; home of Barbourfields Stadium.
To most people far from Bulawayo, Barbourfields means one thing: the stadium, home of Highlanders, and the roar on a big match day. The suburb around it is named for a man called Barbour — Henry Robert Barbour, Mayor of Bulawayo in the 1920s, whose initials are still on the City Hall foundation stone. What can be traced of him is set out in the man behind the name: a Legislative Assembly seat, a photograph at a ceremony in the Matopos, and a swimming pool in Hillside that one local historian linked to the building of the Borrow Street Baths.
The earliest description we have of why the suburb carries his name calls him a mayor who “was greatly interested in the welfare of the indigenous people”, and The Herald has said the same. A second Herald article tells it differently: that the area was built on land once owned by a settler named Barbour. The two need not conflict — a mayor could also have been a landowner — and we have not found the record that settles it.
What we don’t know yet
Which came first, the land or the office. And your Barbourfields: the stadium, the township, growing up within earshot of the crowd. Tell us.
Sources
- Bulawayo’s suburb names, A to M
- F. Q. Mabikwa, ‘Tracing the roots: How Bulawayo’s townships reflect city’s rich Ndebele heritage’, The Herald, 2 November 2024
- ‘Suburbs, street names origin explained’, The Herald (Zimbabwe)
Do you know more about this? Corrections, photographs and your own account are all welcome, and a correction is published on the page with the date it was made. Send something in.