Road - class 3 togher, Derrygowna, Co. Longford

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Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Derrygowna, Co. Longford

Preserved in the bogland of Derrygowna in County Longford lies a fragment of road that most people would walk clean past without recognising it as a road at all.

What remains is a togher, the Irish term for a track or causeway built across soft, wet ground, constructed from interwoven branches rather than stone or gravel. This particular example is just over a metre wide and roughly thirty centimetres deep, its modest dimensions belying the considerable craft involved in keeping people and animals moving safely across treacherous terrain.

The togher was built using branches of ash and hazel, laid both transversely and longitudinally, with individual pieces ranging from two to five centimetres in diameter. That combination of directions is characteristic of deliberate engineering: the crossing branches lock against each other, distributing weight and preventing the structure from sinking unevenly into the peat. A single ash peg, four centimetres in diameter, was found within the body of the togher, likely used to pin the brushwork in place and hold the whole thing together underfoot. The track runs on a northwest to southeast orientation, suggesting it was connecting specific points in the landscape rather than simply following the edge of the bog. Ash and hazel were common choices for this kind of construction across prehistoric and early medieval Ireland, both being flexible, relatively durable when waterlogged, and widely available in the surrounding woodland.

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