This particular example is classified as a class 3 togher, a category that typically denotes a relatively simple construction, perhaps a laid series of timbers or brushwood, rather than the more elaborate mortised plank roads found elsewhere in the Irish midlands. That such a structure exists here at all is a reminder of how densely the bogs of the Irish midlands were once threaded with these engineered routes, many of them dating back thousands of years and now preserved in the cold, anaerobic depths of the peat.

The Derrynaskea togher came to light during a field survey carried out in 1988, noted by B. Raftery, one of Ireland's foremost authorities on bog roads and prehistoric timber trackways. Raftery's work across the midland bogs documented dozens of such features at a time when drainage schemes and turf-cutting were accelerating the destruction of wetland archaeological remains. The Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit, which gathered much of the systematic data on these sites, operated out of University College Dublin and played a significant role in recording what could so easily have been lost without trace. Toghers of this kind were not ceremonial or monumental; they were practical, workaday solutions to the challenge of moving through a landscape that was, for much of the year, saturated and treacherous.