These are toghers, a type of trackway laid across bogland using timber, brush, and occasionally gravel, allowing people and animals to move through terrain that would otherwise have been impassable. In Cooleeny townland alone, a field survey identified 44 of them, which is a remarkable concentration of prehistoric engineering in a single stretch of midland bog.

The survey, carried out by Gowen in 1999, found that most of the toghers were built using a combination of brushwood and roundwood laid directly onto the bog surface, though the builders were clearly adaptable: six used roundwood alone, eight relied entirely on brushwood, and one incorporated gravel alongside brushwood, an unusual variation. Wood species were identified in seventeen of the toghers, and the variety is striking. Alder, ash, birch, blackthorn, hazel, mountain ash, and willow all appear in the record, suggesting that builders worked with whatever timber was available locally rather than favouring a single material. Two of the toghers were radiocarbon dated and both returned Iron Age results: one to 388 to 207 BC, the other to 372 to 192 BC. Those date ranges overlap substantially, raising the possibility that at least some of this network was in active use during a single period, perhaps serving a community that depended on regular crossing of the bog for grazing, trade, or movement between settlements.