Road - class 3 togher, Derrygowna, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Roads & Tracks
In the boglands of Derrygowna in County Longford, a short stretch of ancient wooden road lies preserved in the waterlogged ground, almost exactly as it was left by the people who built it.
It measures just over twelve metres long and roughly thirty centimetres deep, which is modest by any standard, yet the precision of its construction speaks to considerable practical knowledge. This is a togher, the Irish term for a timber trackway laid across wet or marshy ground to allow passage where firm footing would otherwise be impossible.
The structure follows an east-west orientation and is built from worked roundwood, meaning the timbers were shaped rather than simply thrown down raw. The builders used a combination of transverse and longitudinal pieces, laid across and along the line of travel respectively, creating a stable interlocking surface. The timber itself is alder, birch, and oak, each piece ranging between six and eleven centimetres in diameter. This choice of materials is worth noting: alder in particular has long been favoured for wet-ground construction because it resists decay unusually well when kept submerged, which is precisely why so many toghers have survived at all. The peat bog acts as a preserving medium, cutting off the oxygen that would otherwise break organic material down over centuries.