What had been recorded on Clonad Bog in County Offaly in 2001 was a compact spread of ancient brushwood, identified as a togher, and by the time a licensed excavation got underway the site had been reduced to a scatter of woodchips on the field surface. Nothing remained to cut, nothing to sample. The archaeology had simply gone.

A togher is a bog road, a causeway of timber, brushwood, or other organic material laid across wet ground to allow passage. They range from elaborate split-plank trackways to rougher, more improvised structures, and this one fell into the latter category, classified as a tertiary or class 3 togher. When it was first recorded, it measured at least 2.1 metres in length and 2.65 metres wide, a dense deposit just six centimetres deep, consisting of over a hundred pieces of brushwood laid in a broadly organised pattern. The rods ran approximately northwest to southeast, with the cross-pieces, or sails, set at right angles to them, northeast to southwest. The central concentration of material was fragmented but still three or four pieces deep in places, and toolmarks were visible on a number of the elements, suggesting deliberate cutting and shaping rather than casual dumping. Two stakes on the southern edge may have helped fix the structure in place. The whole thing was probably the remains of a hurdle panel, a prefabricated section of woven or bundled wood that could be laid down to form a temporary surface across boggy ground. By the time excavation was attempted under licence in 2004, however, the deposit no longer existed in any recoverable form.