Road - class 3 togher, Cloontamore, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Cloontamore, Co. Longford

In the bogland of Cloontamore, County Longford, there lies the trace of a road that was never meant for tarmac or cart.

It is a togher, a type of ancient trackway built from timber and other organic materials laid across wet or waterlogged ground to allow passage where the land would otherwise swallow a traveller whole. Tóghar roads of this class were engineering solutions to the Irish landscape long before any modern road authority existed, and the bogs that made them necessary also preserved them, sealing wood and structure in anaerobic conditions for centuries or even millennia.

This particular togher falls into what is classified as a class 3 example, a designation within a typological system used to categorise the construction methods and materials of these ancient wetland roads. It came to wider attention during a field survey carried out in 1988, noted by B. Raftery, one of the foremost scholars of Irish prehistoric and early historic archaeology, whose work on bog roads and wetland archaeology helped establish the academic framework still used to study such sites. The survey was part of broader efforts by the Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit, then based at University College Dublin, to document the remarkable concentration of togher sites preserved across the Irish midlands, a region whose extensive raised bogs have protected an extraordinary range of organic archaeological material that would have vanished entirely in drier conditions.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Road – class 3 togher, Cloontamore, Co. Longford. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement