It was never meant to last, of course; it was built to get people across wet, unstable ground, plank by plank, and the bog obliged by preserving what time and use would otherwise have consumed. A togher, as such a trackway is known in Irish archaeological usage, is essentially a causeway of timber laid directly onto the bog surface to distribute weight and allow passage. The Kilmakill example is a modest one in terms of width, rarely more than a couple of planks across, but its age makes it quietly extraordinary.

A peatland survey conducted in 2006 by Archaeological Development Services, led by Whitaker, recorded the trackway running northwest to southeast across the northern edge of the bog, visible at six separate points where drainage works had cut through it. Radiocarbon dating placed its construction at around 1559 BC, give or take nine years. It was built from oak, combining flat longitudinal planks with rounded timber elements, and at sixty metres in total length it represents a meaningful investment of labour and material for whoever needed to cross this ground in the middle Bronze Age. The six sightings revealed a consistent construction method throughout: planks laid end to end along the line of travel, sometimes with roundwood timbers flanking or overlying them. One point in the trackway, recorded as TS-LFP005c, showed a width of over two metres, with a central plank flanked by three roundwood elements, suggesting either a wider section of bog to cross or a deliberate reinforcement of a particularly soft spot. The peat surrounding the timbers throughout was predominantly Sphagnum moss, the kind of slowly accumulating, oxygen-poor material that makes Irish bogs such effective preservers of organic material.