Road - class 2 togher, Longfordpass, Co. Tipperary

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Roads & Tracks

Road – class 2 togher, Longfordpass, Co. Tipperary

Preserved beneath the surface of Littleton Bog in County Tipperary, a thirty-metre stretch of ancient trackway has survived largely intact since sometime between 390 and 160 BC.

This is a togher, the Irish term for a bog road, typically constructed from timber laid across waterlogged ground to allow people and animals to pass safely. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is not just its age, but the variation in how it was built across its own short length.

Recorded in 2006 across the northern corner of Littleton Bog, the togher was visible at three separate points, emerging on the field surface and in the face of a drainage cut. It runs on a northeast to southwest orientation and is narrow, between ten centimetres and sixty-five centimetres wide, and no more than twenty-five centimetres deep. The timber elements vary in their arrangement: at the northeastern end and in the middle section, the wood was laid longitudinally, running along the direction of travel, while at the southwestern end the timbers shift to a transverse arrangement, laid across the trackway instead. Roundwood and brushwood were the main materials throughout. Whether this change in construction method reflects different phases of building, the work of different hands, or simply a practical response to varying ground conditions is not yet known, though it sits within a landscape that contains a notably high concentration of archaeological sites, suggesting the area was well used and perhaps well organised in later prehistory.

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