the building of the Barnfields Road Industrial Estate. (When it appeared that Harecastle tunnel, on the Trent and Mersey Canal, might have to close permanently because of mining subsidence, a bypassing connection between the Leek Branch and the Macclesfield Canal at Bosley was mooted; fortunately Harecastle tunnel remains open to navigation.) A survey has been commissioned to investigate the possibility of extending the branch back into Leek. In November 2009 a breach occurred just beyond the northern portal of Leek Tunnel. This resulted in the end section being closed for eight months while repairs were carried out. The cause of the problem was thought to be an old culvert. While the canal was drained, several other sections of embankment were re-inforced, and the repaired canal was reopened on 5 July 2010. Uttoxeter Canal Originally, the canal also had a further branch, which opened in 1811. Sometimes referred to as the Uttoxeter Canal, it ran from Froghall as far south as Uttoxeter in Staffordshire and had 17 locks. The canal was never a commercial success and in 1849 much of it was filled in by the North Staffordshire Railway Company and converted into the NSR Churnet Valley line from Leekbrook to Uttoxeter (which itself was finally closed for goods traffic in 1988). This line is still open as far south as Froghall, as a preserved railway, the Churnet Valley Railway. Further south, at Denstone, several buildings including a church have been built on the line of the canal. Incidentally this branch line had the first automatic, train-operated level-crossing in the UK, at Spath, just outside Uttoxeter. A few bridges from the Uttoxeter branch remain, with the occasional 'milepost', and Uttoxeter still has an area called "The Wharf". The Caldon & Uttoxeter Canals Trust has put forward plans to re-open the Uttoxeter Branch. Part of the old canal bed has been lost underneath JCB's head office and factory at Rocester, so the proposed route diverges from the original canal. Foxley Another much shorter (approximately ) branch of the Caldon main line, the Foxley, ran from Milton in the north east of Stoke-on-Trent through Sneyd Green to Ford Green Iron Works near Smallthorne, where it ended in two parallel basins of each. What little remains of the Foxley can be found in the Holden Lane Pools nature reserve, as well as alongside the footpath from the reserve to the Elizabethan Ford Green Hall.