Road - class 3 togher, Derryglogher, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Derryglogher, Co. Longford

Preserved beneath the boglands of Derryglogher in County Longford lies a road that no wheeled vehicle ever travelled: a togher, the Irish term for a timber trackway laid across waterlogged ground to allow people and animals to cross terrain that would otherwise have been impassable.

This one is modest in its dimensions, under two metres wide and little more than a third of a metre deep, yet its survival is quietly remarkable. Bog environments, low in oxygen and highly acidic, can arrest the decay of organic material for centuries or even millennia, leaving wooden structures in a state of preservation that dry land rarely permits.

The trackway runs on a north-north-east to south-south-west orientation and is classified as a class 3 togher, a designation that reflects its construction method. Seven roundwoods of birch and hazel form the structural core, laid transversely and packed with hazel brushwood between them. Birch and hazel were common choices for this kind of work across early Irish wetland landscapes, available in quantity, easily worked, and sufficiently flexible to be pressed into service quickly. The brushwood infill helped distribute weight and prevented the heavier timbers from sinking unevenly into the soft ground beneath.

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