Road - class 3 togher, Derryshannoge, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Roads & Tracks
Buried in the bogland of Derryshannoge in County Longford lies what was once a modest but purposeful road, laid down across wet ground by people who needed to get somewhere and had the practical wit to make it happen.
A togher is an ancient trackway built through boggy or waterlogged terrain, typically constructed by laying timber directly onto the soft surface to create a passable route. This particular example is classified as a class 3 togher, meaning it belongs to a less elaborate tradition of bog road construction, one that relied on available materials rather than careful carpentry.
The togher at Derryshannoge runs on an east-west orientation and measures 1.3 metres in width, with a depth of just 0.12 metres, giving a sense of how lightly it sits within the peat. It is composed of dispersed small roundwood with some hazel brushwood woven or scattered through it, a construction method that suggests the builders were working quickly and with whatever timber came readily to hand. Hazel, a common hedgerow and woodland shrub, was frequently used in early Irish wetland construction precisely because it is flexible and easy to work. The roundwood pieces, unworked logs or branches used without shaping, were laid across the bog surface to spread weight and prevent a traveller from sinking. The fact that the materials are described as dispersed hints that the togher was never a highly engineered structure, perhaps a seasonal or localised crossing rather than a major routeway. Irish bogs have preserved thousands of such trackways across the country, some dating back thousands of years, and the Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit at University College Dublin spent years systematically recording them before they were lost to drainage or turf cutting.