Yet those fragments are the remnant of a togher, a type of timber trackway laid across boggy or waterlogged ground, and they represent a deliberate act of engineering carried out somewhere between 1490 and 1263 BC. The structure was recorded in 1988, orientated east to west, and measured roughly two metres in length and just under two metres wide, surviving to a depth of only five centimetres. Several of the timber pieces showed worked ends, meaning they had been shaped by human hands, which confirms this was no accidental accumulation of wood but a constructed pathway.

Radiocarbon dating placed its use firmly in the middle Bronze Age, a period when Ireland's midland bogs were being crossed, managed, and traversed with considerable regularity. Toghers of this era vary in complexity, from simple arrangements of brushwood to more elaborate plank roads supported on driven stakes, and are classified accordingly. This example falls into class 3, indicating a relatively modest construction. The dating figure cited, 3115±40 BP (before present), was processed under laboratory reference GrN-16567 and published by Raftery in 1996 as part of a wider survey of Irish wetland roads. The site at Derryoghil was catalogued as number 11 in that study. The Irish midlands contain a remarkable concentration of such trackways, preserved by the anaerobic conditions of peat bog, which prevent the decay of organic material that would otherwise vanish within decades.