Road - class 3 togher, Derrynaskea, Co. Longford

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Roads & Tracks

Road – class 3 togher, Derrynaskea, Co. Longford

Beneath the bogland of Derrynaskea in County Longford, there lies a togher, a type of ancient trackway built to carry people and animals across otherwise impassable wetland terrain.

What makes this particular example quietly notable is its classification as a class 3 togher, a category that generally refers to simpler, less engineered constructions than the more elaborate plank roads found elsewhere in Irish bogs, often comprising brushwood, branches, or rough timber laid directly onto the marsh surface to provide just enough grip and stability for passage.

The trackway was recorded during a field survey in 1988, with the observation attributed to B. Raftery, one of the foremost scholars of Irish bog roads and prehistoric wetland archaeology. Tогher trackways of this kind can range considerably in age, from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period, and their presence in a given townland often signals that the surrounding bog was once a zone of movement and activity rather than a barrier to it. Derrynaskea, like many Longford place-names, sits within a landscape shaped by centuries of interaction between settled communities and the slow, waterlogged ground that surrounded them.

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