Road - class 2 togher, Derryglogher, Co. Longford

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Road – class 2 togher, Derryglogher, Co. Longford

Buried in the bogland of Derryglogher in County Longford lies a stretch of ancient timber road that once allowed people to cross ground that would otherwise have swallowed them whole.

A togher is a bog road, built from wood laid across wet or waterlogged terrain, and this example is a quietly precise piece of early engineering: fifty-four metres long, just over a metre wide, and sitting roughly thirty-five centimetres deep in the peat.

The construction follows a logical layered method. Five longitudinal roundwood timbers, mostly birch, run along the length of the road, and beneath them lies a substructure of compact hazel brushwood packed three pieces deep, providing a firm foundation in ground that offered none naturally. Birch and hazel were both common woodland species in the Irish midlands, and their use here was almost certainly practical rather than incidental. The togher is orientated north-northeast to south-southwest, suggesting it was laid with a specific crossing in mind, connecting two points across an otherwise impassable stretch of bog. A closely similar structure has been recorded nearby in the same townland, which raises the possibility that this part of Longford once carried more regular foot or animal traffic across the wetlands than the landscape today would suggest.

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