Road - togher, Killoran, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Roads & Tracks

Road – togher, Killoran, Co. Tipperary

Buried beneath the surface of Derryville Bog in Killoran townland, County Tipperary, lies a network of ancient roads that were never meant to be seen again.

Twenty-nine toghers, some confirmed and some probable, were identified here during field survey work, making this one of the more concentrated clusters of bog roadways recorded in the Irish midlands. A togher is a trackway laid across boggy or waterlogged ground, typically constructed from timber and brushwood, allowing people and animals to cross terrain that would otherwise have been impassable. What makes Killoran unusual is not simply the number of these structures but the variety of their construction and the window they open onto a working, organised landscape that has long since disappeared under peat.

Field survey carried out by Gowen in 1999 recorded the details of how these trackways were built. In fifteen cases, brushwood alone formed the road surface, laid flat to spread weight across the soft ground. The remaining examples combined brushwood with roundwood, suggesting a more substantial effort, perhaps for heavier use or more difficult ground conditions. Three of the toghers showed evidence of pegs or stakes, which would have been driven down to hold the structure in place and prevent it shifting under foot traffic. Radiocarbon dating of a sample from one togher returned a date range of AD 1024 to 1162, placing at least part of this network firmly in the early medieval period, when the Irish countryside was organised around monastic centres, cattle economies, and seasonal movement across difficult terrain. Wood species identified across thirteen of the toghers included alder, ash, birch, elm, hazel, holly, and mountain ash, with ash and hazel predominating. The choice of species was unlikely to be accidental; both ash and hazel are relatively flexible and rot-resistant, practical materials for anyone laying a road they hoped would last a season or more in waterlogged ground.

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