Road - class 3 togher, Derrindiff, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Derrindiff, Co. Longford

In the bogland of Derrindiff, County Longford, a narrow bundle of cut branches was laid into the wet ground and left there, pressed into the earth until the peat closed over it and time forgot it entirely.

What survives is a togher, the Irish term for a trackway built across boggy or waterlogged terrain, and this particular example is classified as a possible hurdle type, meaning it was likely constructed from woven or bundled rods of hazel and ash rather than heavier split planks or laid logs.

The structure measures 1.85 metres wide and survives to a depth of around 0.15 metres, with the individual branches ranging from roughly two to six centimetres in diameter. That combination of hazel and ash is characteristic of opportunistic but deliberate woodland management; both trees coppice readily, producing straight, flexible rods of workable thickness, and their presence together suggests whoever built this trackway knew their local woodland and cut accordingly. The alignment runs east to west. Beyond that orientation, and the dimensions of the brushwood itself, the record is quiet. No date is attached, no associated finds are mentioned, and the bog has given up only the physical fact of the thing: a prepared surface, laid with purpose, crossing ground that would otherwise have been impassable.

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