Road - togher, Drehid, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Roads & Tracks
Exposed in the cut face of a turf-bank in County Kildare, a scatter of broken and displaced timbers points to something that was once a considerable feat of engineering: a togher, or ancient timber trackway, laid across open bogland to make it passable. The timbers were noted protruding from the north face of an old turf-bank, with the structure apparently continuing into an area of uncut peat beyond, much of it still buried and preserved in the anaerobic conditions that bog is so good at maintaining.
The trackway may have stretched for approximately 2,200 metres, running from dry ground in Drehid townland to the northwest, across the bog, and out onto what is described as Drumachon "island" in Timahoe East townland to the southeast. That word "island" here refers not to anything surrounded by water, but to a raised area of firm ground within the bog, a common enough feature in the Irish midland landscape. The route would have connected two areas of habitable or workable land across an otherwise impassable stretch of wetland. Toghers of this kind were built at various points throughout Irish prehistory and the early medieval period, often representing significant communal effort in felling, splitting, and laying timber across unstable ground.