It did not sink; the bog grew up around it, layer by slow layer, until the timber was sealed beneath centuries of peat. It came to light not through excavation but through the drain face, the cut edge of a drainage channel, where its timbers were spotted at eight separate points along its course.

A togher is an ancient trackway laid across boggy or waterlogged ground, typically constructed from wood, and this one follows an east to west orientation that was almost certainly deliberate. Killaderry Bog contains a natural ridge running along the same axis, and the togher appears to have been aligned towards it. The likely logic is practical: the ridge would have offered firmer footing across ground that was otherwise impassable, and the togher extended that route into the softer margins where the ridge fell short. At some point the encroaching peat overtook both the ridge and the road, preserving them together. The construction itself is characteristic of the type, longitudinally laid roundwood and flat planks forming the running surface, with transverse roundwood placed underneath in sections to act as a base layer and spread the load across the soft ground below.