What it actually represents is a carefully engineered solution to one of the oldest problems in the Irish landscape: how to cross waterlogged, unstable ground. This is a togher, a type of timber trackway built across bogland, and the example at Derrynagran is a particularly compact specimen, just sixty centimetres wide and a little under ten centimetres deep.

The construction follows a logical two-layer approach. A substructure of birch brushwood was laid down first to distribute weight and prevent sinking, and on top of that, the builders placed a surface of hazel roundwood, the slender poles averaging around six centimetres in diameter, running roughly northwest to southeast across the wet ground. What makes this find especially telling are the toolmarks identified on the timber. These are not accidentally felled branches or driftwood pressed into service; someone shaped this material deliberately, which speaks to a degree of planning and craft that sits quietly at odds with the idea of prehistoric road-building as improvised or casual. Toghers of this kind are classified by their construction method, and a class 3 togher like this one is defined by precisely this combination of a roundwood surface over a brushwood foundation.