Road - togher, Derryoghil, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Roads & Tracks
In the bogland of Derryoghil, Co. Longford, a narrow strip of ancient road lies preserved in the waterlogged ground, visible only where a drainage channel has sliced through the peat and exposed its edge.
This is a togher, the Irish term for a timber trackway laid across wet or marshy ground, and what makes it quietly remarkable is how ordinary its materials are. Thin poles, small branches, bundles of brushwood, all pressed together and set into the bog, forming a surface just wide enough for a person to cross ground that would otherwise have been impassable.
The exposed section measures roughly 0.8 metres wide and about 0.12 metres thick, aligned on a roughly east to west axis. The construction method is straightforward but effective: closely set roundwood poles, each averaging around seven centimetres in diameter, laid together and supplemented with brushwood. A separate bed of twigs and smaller brushwood was recorded about 0.2 metres to the south of the main structure, and the togher was found to be present in both faces of the drain, meaning it continues into the unexcavated peat on either side. Toghers like this were built across Ireland from the Neolithic period onwards, with many of the most significant examples found in the midland bogs of counties like Longford, Roscommon, and Offaly. The bog preserves organic material that would otherwise rot away entirely, which is why the wood here survives at all.
