Canterbury Rd was established in the same era as Whitehorse Rd, which becomes the Maroondah Highway as it heads east. Canterbury Rd starts on the east side of Burke Rd, a continuation of Rathmines Rd and Liddiard St, Hawthorn. The western end of Canterbury Rd was regarded as the southern end of Henry Elgar’s survey of 1841, and the western continuations are no more than part of subdivisions made in the 1850s. Surveyors were able to follow a ridge east for the Maroondah Highway, but the easterly route of Canterbury Rd was destined to involve a kink near today’s Stanhope Gr, which came about during the building of the Outer Circle railway in the early 1890s. According to a map of the Shire of Boroondara in 1871 Canterbury Rd was straight as it extended east from Burke Rd.