Road - class 3 togher, Cloonfinfy, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Roads & Tracks
Buried in the bogland of Cloonfinfy in County Longford lies the remains of a togher, an ancient wooden road built to carry people and animals across ground that would otherwise have been impassable.
These structures were a practical solution to Ireland's vast stretches of wet, spongy terrain, and they appear across the midlands in considerable numbers, preserved by the very waterlogged conditions that made them necessary in the first place.
This particular togher is classed as a class 3 example, meaning it was constructed from longitudinal roundwood, that is, timber laid lengthways along the direction of travel rather than across it like railway sleepers. The individual poles are modest in diameter, between eight and nine centimetres, and the road itself is around one and a half metres wide and roughly twelve centimetres deep. It runs on a northeast to southwest orientation. The simplicity of the construction is part of what makes it interesting. There is no elaborate carpentry here, no mortise joints or carefully split planks; just round timber laid down in the bog and pressed into service as a path. The Irish word togher, from the Old Irish tóchar, refers precisely to this kind of causeway built across soft or marshy ground, and examples have been found in Ireland dating back thousands of years.
