A field survey of Cooleeny townland identified 44 toghers, a word for the bog roads that Iron Age and earlier communities laid down to cross otherwise impassable wetlands, running across the bog. These were not casual structures. Builders worked with what the surrounding landscape offered, weaving and stacking brushwood, roundwood, and in one case even gravel, to create surfaces that could bear weight across ground that would otherwise swallow a person whole.

The variety of construction methods across the 44 toghers is telling. Most combined brushwood and roundwood, but six relied on roundwood alone and eight on brushwood alone, suggesting either different builders, different purposes, or simply different materials to hand on different occasions. Where the wood species could be identified across seventeen of the toghers, the range is striking: alder, ash, birch, blackthorn, hazel, mountain ash, and willow all appear, pointing to a careful and opportunistic use of local woodland. Two of the toghers have been radiocarbon dated, both falling within the Iron Age. The date ranges of 388 to 207 BC and 372 to 192 BC respectively place them in a period when the bog was clearly a lived-in landscape rather than a barrier, something to be navigated with considerable practical knowledge. The survey that brought all of this to light was carried out by Gowen in 1999, and the results were published in a detailed field report covering this part of north Tipperary.