Road - class 3 togher, Derryglogher, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Derryglogher, Co. Longford

Beneath the bogland of Derryglogher in County Longford lies a togher, an ancient roadway of timber laid across waterlogged ground to allow people and animals to cross terrain that would otherwise swallow them whole.

This particular example is classified as a class 3 togher, a category that generally refers to a more rudimentary construction than the elaborate plank roads found at prestige sites, typically involving round wood, brushwood, or loosely arranged timber rather than carefully dressed planks. The bog, in preserving organic material with extraordinary fidelity, has kept this structure intact long after the landscape around it was transformed.

The togher was recorded during a field survey carried out in 1988, with the observation communicated by B. Raftery, one of the foremost scholars of Irish prehistoric trackways and wetland archaeology. At the time of recording, the structure was noted as running on a north-south orientation, which offers a faint suggestion of the route it once served, perhaps connecting areas of dry ground on either side of a stretch of bog. Ireland's bogland trackways span a remarkable range of dates, with some extending back into the Neolithic period and others constructed well into the early medieval era, though without dating evidence specific to this site, its age remains an open question.

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