But what appeared in the industrial peatland at Cashel, County Laois, during Bord na Móna's milled peat operations was a glimpse into a landscape that existed roughly five and a half thousand years ago. The timbers, oriented in a south-east to north-west direction and lying about 0.90 metres below the field surface, belonged to a world of wet ground and careful, deliberate woodworking at the very edge of what we understand about Neolithic habitation in Ireland.

The structure consists of four closely spaced, parallel roundwoods, ranging from 0.07 to 0.14 metres in diameter. They are thought to represent either a small platform or a short section of a togher, which is an ancient trackway built from timber to allow passage across boggy or waterlogged ground. Such features are not unusual in Irish peatlands, but this one is notable for its age. A sample taken from one of the timbers was identified as alder, a wood commonly used in wet conditions because of its resistance to decay in waterlogged environments, and radiocarbon dating placed it between 3780 and 3640 BC. That puts its construction in the Neolithic period, making it one of the earlier dated examples of this kind of timber engineering in the region. The four elements were not found in any of the surrounding drains, suggesting they survive as a small isolated remnant rather than part of a more extensive system that has since been lost to drainage or peat cutting.