Road - togher, Coolreagh, Co. Clare

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Roads & Tracks

Road – togher, Coolreagh, Co. Clare

Beneath the bogland of Coolreagh in County Clare, a togher lies recorded but largely unexamined.

A togher is a trackway built from timber, brushwood, or other organic material, laid down across waterlogged or boggy ground to allow people and animals to pass. Thousands of years before roads were metalled or mapped, these structures were Ireland's quiet infrastructure, and the bogs that swallowed them have, in many cases, preserved them remarkably well.

The Coolreagh togher is listed as a monument, which places it within the broader pattern of bog road construction documented across Ireland from the Neolithic period through the early medieval era. Clare's midland and western boglands contain a number of such features, some of which have yielded dendrochronological dates, tool marks, and traces of the woodland species felled to build them. Without further excavation or detailed survey information for this particular site, its age and construction method remain open questions, but its classification as a road monument rather than an incidental find suggests it was recognised as a deliberate and possibly substantial piece of ancient engineering.

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