In the cut face of a Bord na Móna turf bank near Timahoe in County Kildare, a small cluster of ancient brushwood sits exposed roughly 1.4 metres below the present bog surface. It is a modest thing to look at: a deposit less than ten centimetres thick and not quite a metre wide, made up of more than fifteen pieces of light wood and twigs, none of them thicker than four centimetres. Yet its very presence there, sealed for an unknown length of time beneath the accumulating peat, marks it as something deliberate rather than accidental.

Bogs preserve organic material with unusual fidelity because their waterlogged, acidic conditions starve bacteria of the oxygen needed for decomposition. Whatever this structure once was, whether a platform, a trackway, or some kind of laid surface, the peat closed over it and held it. The turf bank in which it now appears stands 2.5 metres high, and the deposit is described as partially removed and degrading, meaning that by the time it was recorded, the cutting machinery had already taken part of it. What remains gives only a partial picture of the original extent.