Road - class 3 togher, Cloonmore, Co. Longford

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Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Cloonmore, Co. Longford

In the bogland of Cloonmore, County Longford, a ancient track lies preserved in waterlogged peat, invisible to anyone walking above it but recorded by archaeologists as a class 3 togher, one of the humbler categories of Ireland's remarkable tradition of wooden bog roads.

A togher is essentially a causeway or trackway built across soft, wet ground, constructed from timber, brushwood, or other organic material, and the bogs of the Irish midlands have preserved hundreds of them in extraordinary condition, some dating back thousands of years. The class designation refers to the complexity of construction, with class 3 representing a relatively simple form compared to the elaborate mortised and pegged planking of more celebrated examples.

This particular togher was noted during a field survey in 1989, its orientation running northeast to southwest across the bog. The detail comes from B. Raftery, one of Ireland's foremost authorities on bog roads and prehistoric trackways, whose systematic work across the midland wetlands brought many such features to light before drainage and turf-cutting could erase them entirely. The Irish midlands contain some of the densest concentrations of ancient trackways anywhere in Europe, laid down by communities who needed reliable routes across terrain that would otherwise have been impassable for much of the year. Even a modest class 3 example represents a deliberate communal effort, felling and laying timber in ground that would swallow it slowly over centuries, sealing it in conditions that prevent decay.

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