It is a togher, an ancient trackway built across wet or marshy ground using whatever timber grew nearby, and this particular example is a modest but quietly remarkable thing: just over a metre wide and barely more than a finger's depth of layered wood, yet still identifiable as a constructed route through landscape that would otherwise have been impassable.

The togher at Derrygowna is classified as a class 3 example, meaning it was built using brushwood rather than the heavier split planks or round timbers found in more substantial trackways. It runs on a northwest to southeast orientation and consists of both transverse and longitudinal brushwood, the thin stems laid in crossing directions to create a stable, if slight, surface underfoot. The material used, hazel and alder, is telling. Both are trees that tend to grow along the edges of wet ground, making them the obvious local resource for anyone trying to cross a bog. The individual stems averaged roughly two centimetres in diameter, which gives some sense of how fine and deliberate the construction was. This was not heavy engineering; it was careful, practical work done with what was at hand.