It had been woven, pressed into the wet ground, and then forgotten for roughly three thousand years. What eventually came to light was a hurdle togher, a trackway made from panels of interlaced wood laid across soft or waterlogged terrain to allow passage. These structures are among the more perishable traces of prehistoric life, which is precisely why bogland, with its cool, acidic, oxygen-poor conditions, is almost the only place they survive.

The site first appeared during a re-assessment survey in 2013, when a hurdle panel was spotted in the face of a drain, barely below the surface. A formal excavation followed the next year under licence 14E0291, cutting into the Sphagnum peats where the structure had been preserved. The togher ran roughly north to south, constructed from east-west oriented upright stakes, known as sails, some reaching over two metres in length. Between and around these, rods of ash and hazel had been woven tightly and packed close together, the widest section measuring just over a metre across. The sails appeared singly and in pairs at regular intervals, suggesting considered, deliberate construction rather than hurried improvisation. Eighteen of the worked timber ends survived, each shaped to a simple chisel point with slightly concave facets, the kind of toolwork that leaves a recognisable signature on the wood. A fragment of ash was submitted for AMS radiocarbon dating, a technique that measures the decay of carbon isotopes to establish age with precision, and returned a date of between approximately 1210 and 1022 BC, placing the togher firmly in the middle Bronze Age. Additional structural elements were found on an adjoining field surface to the south-east, suggesting the trackway extended further than the single cutting could reveal.