Buried in the bogland near Timahoe in County Kildare lies the remnant of a road that was never meant to last forever, yet has outlasted almost everything built around the same time. It is a togher, an ancient timber trackway laid across wet or marshy ground to allow people and animals to pass where the earth alone would not hold them. This particular example runs 115 metres on a northwest to southeast alignment and is just over two metres wide, roughly the span of a narrow country lane today.

The construction is precise in a way that repays close attention. The builders laid down a compact layer of ash and oak roundwoods lengthwise along the route, the timbers ranging from around eight to sixteen centimetres in diameter. Some of these have been split in half, flat side up, to create a more even walking surface. Slender hazel brushwood rods, far thinner than the main timbers, were woven in at intervals, and the outer edges of the entire structure were fixed with pegs worked to wedge and chisel points, a simple but effective way of preventing the road from splaying apart under foot traffic or the weight of laden animals. In places, the upper surfaces of the timbers show charring, which may indicate scorching during construction or use, and scattered hazelnuts appear across the site, small traces of the people who once moved along it. Pockets of sand within the structure suggest deliberate infilling to stabilise or level particular sections. The bog that swallowed the togher is also what preserved it, keeping the organic material from the decay that would have claimed it long ago on dry ground.