the former London Psychiatric Hospital. After passing to the west of Fanshawe College, Highbury Avenue travels through the neighbourhood of Huron Heights. It crosses the North Thames River, and reaches the London rural–urban fringe just north of the historic crossroad hamlet of Fanshawe at Stoney Creek. It narrows to a two-lane rural road and becomes surrounded by farmland north of there. Approximately north of Sunningdale Road, it crosses from London into Middlesex Centre. Middlesex Centre Highbury Avenue travels north through the municipality of Middlesex Centre, where it is designated as Middlesex County Road23. It bisects the communities of Ballymote at Middlesex County Road28 (Medway Road), and Bryanston at Middlesex County Road16 (Plover Mills Road). Otherwise, it is almost exclusively surrounded by farmland for the remainder of its length. It ends at Highway7 (Elginfield Road), the boundary between Middlesex Centre and Lucan Biddulph, approximately east of Elginfield. History North of the Thames River, what would eventually become Highbury Avenue was first laid out as a concession road in the original survey of London Township. Mahlon Burwell began this survey in 1810, but its completion was delayed until after the end of the War of 1812. Because it connected to the London Asylum (opened 1870, later the London Psychiatric Hospital), the concession road came to be known as the Asylum Side Road. However, this name was apparently never official. As development in London crept eastward along Hamilton Road in the early 20thcentury, Highbury Avenue was adopted as the local name of the route near that crossroad as early as 1921. It became the official name of the entire route north of the Thames River in late 1928. South of the Thames River, no road existed before the 1960s between the present-day Green Valley Road, south of Highway401, and Power Street, on the north shore of the river. Plans to widen Highbury Avenue and extend it south to the new Highway401 emerged in the late 1950s. In February 1958, a new four-lane overpass of the north of Dundas Street was opened, replacing an old bridge that had existed since at least 1915. This was the first obstacle to widening the entire road as an eastern bypass of London. Later in the year, on September9, Minister of Highways Fred Cass announced that pre-engineering work would begin on the Highbury Avenue extension to Highway401 the following year. A contract to build bridge over the Thames