Road - class 3 togher, Derrynagran, Co. Longford

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Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Derrynagran, Co. Longford

In a bog at Derrynagran, County Longford, the remains of an ancient trackway survive in a form so modest it is easy to underestimate.

Just over half a metre wide and barely fourteen centimetres deep, this is not a road in any grand sense, but it was a road nonetheless, laid down to carry people across ground that would otherwise have swallowed them.

The structure is what is known as a togher, a timber trackway built across bogland or marshy terrain, a form of infrastructure that Irish communities were constructing for thousands of years before the first paved surface appeared anywhere on the island. This particular example is classed as a class 3 togher, meaning it is a relatively simple construction. Five hazel roundwoods, each between six and nine centimetres in diameter, were laid longitudinally in a northeast to southwest orientation, with a slender piece of ash brushwood, only a centimetre across, placed beneath them. The hazel timbers would have rested on and been stabilised by that underlying layer, creating a narrow but functional surface above the wet ground. Hazel and ash were both common choices for this kind of work, being flexible, relatively straight, and readily available from managed woodland or scrub. The whole assembly is compact enough to suggest a path for a single person rather than a cart or livestock, a quiet route through difficult terrain rather than a major thoroughfare.

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