What makes it particularly striking is not its age alone, but the evidence of the hands that built it: the brushwood used in its construction was deliberately shaped, with ends cut to chisel points using what was identifiably a metal axe, and one of the worked pieces even carried a raised signature, a mark left by the craftsperson who shaped it.

The site at Corragarrow first came to attention when it was recorded as a puddle togher, a type of trackway or surface laid across wet ground to allow passage through bogland, visible in a drain face running roughly east to west. That initial observation noted nine pieces of brushwood and two small split timbers, all in poor condition. Excavation in 2002 told a more complete story. What emerged was a platform 5.5 metres wide and roughly 0.21 metres deep, made from very straight brushwood arranged longitudinally in two to three dense layers. Three slightly larger pieces, each around 1.74 metres long, were positioned at either end and in the centre at a marginally higher level than the rest, suggesting a deliberate structural logic. Crucially, none of the material had been disturbed by modern milling, which had destroyed so much comparable archaeology across Irish boglands. Radiocarbon dating placed the construction between 1258 and 1215 BC, placing it firmly in the Later Bronze Age, a period when communities in Ireland were already working metal with considerable skill, as that axe-cut brushwood attests.