Road - class 1 togher

The National Monuments Service's description

The site (L 163.9m min.; Wth 1.75m; D 0.35m) is orientated ENE-WSW and consists of layers of sand, gravel, stone and brushwood with planks forming the upper walking-surface. This site is likely to represent a number of phases or episodes of construction as 0.05-0.2m of undisturbed peat separated a numbers of layers. The basal layer (Wth 1.26m; D 0.4m) consisted of a bed of gravel and sand with decayed sandstone flagstones. It was deepest in the centre of the deposit tapering to 0.05m deep at the edges. Above this, separated by approximately 0.1m of poorly-humified Sphagnum peat, the overlying deposit was similarly comprised of a thin layer of sand, gravel and flagstones (Wth 0.93m; D 0.05m). Again, approximately 0.1m of similar peat separated this from the overlying deposit of compact mixed brushwood and light roundwoods, up to six pieces deep, with occasional gravel and lens of fine gravel (Wth 2.1m; D 0.26m). This layer was directly overlain by a superstructure of three longitudinal oak planks (Wth 0.6m; D 0.14m). One of these timbers was radially split with a mortice at one end while the others were an inner and a second inner tangential split. The latter timber was dendrochronologically dated to AD 1219±9 (Q9252) and had a degraded mortice. This site may relate to SMR OF015-269----, located approximately 204m to the N, although the large intervening area and slight variation in construction made it difficult to determine this with certainty.

Compiled by: Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit (University College Dublin).

Date of upload: 23 May 2011