Road - class 2 togher, Longfordpass, Co. Tipperary

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Roads & Tracks

Road – class 2 togher, Longfordpass, Co. Tipperary

Scattered across the surface of a Tipperary bog, fragments of roundwood and brushwood mark what was once a path through ground that would otherwise have been impassable.

The remains at Longfordpass are those of a togher, a timber trackway of the kind that Irish communities built across bogland for centuries, threading routes through waterlogged terrain by laying branches, planks, or split timbers directly onto the peat. This particular example is classed as a class 2 togher, meaning its construction relied on relatively simple, loosely arranged timber elements rather than the more elaborate jointed or pegged structures found elsewhere.

When surveyors recorded the site in 2006, the togher was visible at two separate points on the field surface of opposing fields, its line running west-northwest to east-southeast across the bog. Whitaker, writing that same year, noted that the elements were sparsely laid, a condition likely worsened by prolonged exposure to peat-cutting machinery. At the western end of the trackway, the remains consisted of a single transverse roundwood and three fragmented brushwood pieces, all orientated northeast-southwest, measuring between 0.6 and 1.2 metres in length and just 0.02 to 0.1 metres in diameter. The timbers were poorly preserved, milled across their upper surfaces. The surrounding peat was poorly humified and rich in Sphagnum moss, with occasional inclusions of Calluna, the common heather, and Eriophorum, the cottongrass that is a reliable indicator of wet, acidic bogland. In total, the visible portion of the trackway extended roughly 20 metres, though what lies beneath the surrounding peat, or what machinery has already removed, is harder to say.

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