It is a togher, an ancient trackway built from timber and brushwood laid directly across wet or waterlogged ground, allowing people to cross terrain that would otherwise have swallowed them whole. Toghers vary considerably in their construction, and this one is classed as a class 3 example, a category that typically indicates a relatively simple form of wooden trackway rather than the more elaborate plank or beam roads found elsewhere in the Irish midlands.

The site came to light during a field survey in 1988, noted by the archaeologist B. Raftery, whose work on Irish bog roads remains foundational to the study of these structures. The Irish midlands, with their extensive raised bogs, preserve organic material with unusual fidelity, and wooden trackways that might have rotted away entirely in drier soils can survive here for thousands of years. The precise age of the Cloontamore togher is not recorded in available sources, but toghers in this region range in date from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period, constructed by communities for whom the bog was not simply an obstacle but a managed, traversed, and sometimes sacred landscape.