Toghers are among the more quietly remarkable survivals in the Irish archaeological record. Where ordinary roads rot away or are built over, bogland preserves wood with unusual fidelity, holding structural timbers in near-perfect condition for thousands of years. The one at Cloontamore is classed as a class 3 togher, a category that typically refers to a relatively simple construction, lighter in engineering terms than the great prehistoric trackways of the midland bogs but no less deliberate in intent.

The site came to attention during a field survey carried out in 1988, noted by B. Raftery, the archaeologist whose work on Irish bog roads and wetland archaeology helped bring this category of monument into clearer scholarly focus. The survey was part of a broader effort to systematically record Ireland's wetland archaeological heritage, at a time when the rapid commercial cutting of bogland made such documentation genuinely urgent. Toghers of this type were built to allow movement across terrain that would otherwise have been impassable, connecting communities, farmsteads, and resources in a landscape that was far wetter and more extensive in earlier centuries than it is today. The exact date of the Cloontamore togher is not recorded, but such structures range in age from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period and beyond.