United Pentecostal Church, Matopos Road

Also known as UPC Matopos Road, United Pentecostal Church Bulawayo.

Church on Matopos Road, Bulawayo, photographed in about 2005; a round building of face brick whose history is still to be gathered.

You can’t miss the United Pentecostal Church on Matopos Road. It is a round building of plain face brick, quite unlike the pitched roofs and spires of most Bulawayo churches. It was photographed in about 2005, and it is one of the most striking buildings among the site’s church pictures.

Almost everything else about it, we have still to learn.

What the photographs show

Five photographs from about 2005 show the church from the road and the garden. The main body of the church is a drum of face brick, low and round, with a slatted edge running around the top of the wall. The entrances are tall, narrow openings set between angled brick walls, which step down on either side like buttresses. A tall, box-like structure with slatted sides rises above the roof. It may be a bell housing or a ventilator. Lower brick buildings stand beside it. Palms, clipped hedges and lawns surround it.

What we don’t know yet

• When it was built, and for whom. Was this building designed for the United Pentecostal Church, or did the congregation move into a church built by another denomination? A round church like this is unusual, and someone will know who designed it.
• The congregation’s story. When did the United Pentecostal Church come to Bulawayo, and who were its first pastors?
• What it is like inside. How is the round interior arranged, and where does the light come from?

If you worship at UPC Matopos Road, or did in the past, or if you know the building’s story, please get in touch. We would love to tell it properly.

5 photographs of United Pentecostal Church, Matopos Road →