Road - class 3 togher, Derryglogher, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Roads & Tracks
In the bogland of Derryglogher, County Longford, a road lies buried that was never built for wheels or horses.
It was laid down through wet ground using split and rounded timbers of birch and alder, pressed into the soft earth to create a surface just wide enough for a person, perhaps a loaded animal, to pick a careful path across terrain that would otherwise swallow them whole.
The structure is what archaeologists call a togher, an Irish word for a wooden trackway laid across boggy or waterlogged ground. This example runs on a north-north-east to south-south-west orientation, measures 2.7 metres in width, and survives to a depth of around 12 centimetres. It is classed as a class 3 togher, meaning it is constructed from longitudinal roundwood, that is, timbers laid lengthways along the direction of travel rather than set crosswise as corduroy-style tracks often are. The choice of birch and alder is no accident; both species tolerate wet conditions and were commonly available in the kinds of marginal landscape where toghers were needed most. The data was gathered by the Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit at University College Dublin, a research body that spent years systematically recording the extraordinary volume of wooden infrastructure preserved beneath Irish bogs.
