Road - class 3 togher, Derrynagran, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Derrynagran, Co. Longford

In the boglands of Derrynagran, County Longford, the remains of an ancient trackway survive in the waterlogged ground, narrow enough to be overlooked but precise enough to tell a quiet story about how people once moved through difficult terrain.

This is a togher, a type of wooden roadway laid across boggy or marshy ground, and this particular example is a modest thing: just sixty centimetres wide and a little under ten centimetres deep, orientated east to west across the landscape.

The construction technique is straightforward but considered. Lengths of hazel roundwood, each averaging around six centimetres in diameter, were laid longitudinally along the line of travel, then interspersed with twigs to fill the gaps and create a stable walking surface. Hazel was a practical choice, being both flexible and widely available in early Irish woodland management. The result is what archaeologists classify as a class 3 togher, a category that reflects this laid-longitudinal method of assembly rather than the more complex arrangements seen in larger, better-known bog roads. The site sits within a county that has yielded numerous such trackways, the boglands of the Irish midlands acting as accidental archives, preserving organic material that would have rotted away long ago on drier ground.

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