Road - class 1 togher, Loughnacush, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Roads & Tracks

Road – class 1 togher, Loughnacush, Co. Kildare

Somewhere beneath the harvested surface of Timahoe Bog in County Kildare, a Bronze Age road lies preserved in the peat. A togher, as these ancient wooden trackways are known in Irish archaeology, is essentially a causeway engineered to carry people and perhaps livestock across terrain that would otherwise have been impassable. This particular example is modest in its construction, almost deliberately so, and that modesty is part of what makes it interesting.

The trackway runs on an ESE-WNW orientation, connecting dry ground near Ardnacoolia in Timahoe West townland to the east with dry ground in Loughnacush and Parsonstown townlands to the west, covering an estimated distance of around 2,275 metres across the bog. Archaeological excavation in 1986 uncovered two small sections, one of 35 metres and one of 6 metres, described at the time as a flimsy path made of birch logs. The logs were small, none more than two metres in length and around ten centimetres in diameter, laid end to end in an irregular pattern with only the roughest trimming of their ends. There was no sophisticated carpentry, no brushwood packing, no additional roundwood to stabilise the surface. It was, in effect, the minimum viable road. Radiocarbon dating carried out by the Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit at UCD placed the trackway's construction somewhere between 2466 and 2200 BC, placing it firmly in the Early Bronze Age. Midway across the bog, it intersected a second, separate trackway built from oak, suggesting that Timahoe Bog was crossed by more than one engineered route during prehistory, and that these crossing points may have held some practical or even social significance for communities moving through the midland landscape.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Road – class 1 togher, Loughnacush, Co. Kildare. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement