Just sixty-seven centimetres wide and a mere seven centimetres deep, it would be easy to dismiss as insignificant. But its modesty is precisely the point.

This is a togher, a type of ancient trackway built across wet or boggy ground using timber laid directly into the marsh to create a stable surface for crossing otherwise impassable terrain. Toghers were constructed over many centuries in Ireland, some dating back thousands of years, and the bogs that swallowed them whole have paradoxically become their greatest preservers, starving the wood of the oxygen needed for decay. The Derraghan More example is classed as a class 3 togher, meaning it is a relatively simple construction rather than one of the more elaborate multi-layered roads found elsewhere in the Irish midlands. It runs on an east-west orientation and is built from a layer of ash brushwood laid beneath a single oak roundwood, a combination that reflects both what the local landscape could supply and the practical demands of keeping a crossing serviceable underfoot. Ash and oak were workhorses of early Irish woodland craft, valued for their strength and availability, and finding them together here suggests a builder who knew their materials well, even if the scale of the project was modest.