It is not a road in any sense that most people would recognise, but it served exactly that purpose, carrying people and perhaps livestock across ground that would otherwise have swallowed them whole.

The structure is a togher, the Irish term for a trackway laid across wet or boggy terrain, typically constructed from timber, brushwood, or a combination of both. This particular example is classed as a class 3 togher, meaning it was built using longitudinal roundwood, that is, lengths of timber laid running in the direction of travel, reinforced with brushwood beneath or alongside. At just fifteen centimetres deep, it sits relatively close to the original bog surface, suggesting it was a modest, functional crossing rather than a major engineered route. The timber species chosen were not random. Alder, ash, and hazel were all locally abundant in Irish wetland landscapes, and alder in particular was valued by early builders because it resists decay unusually well when kept permanently wet. The trackway runs east to west, which may reflect the practical geography of the surrounding terrain, connecting drier ground on either side of a boggy expanse that has since grown deeper over the centuries.