Road - unclassified togher

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated on flat bog with good views in all directions. A stone-laid trackway and two large wooden troughs were discovered by turf cutters in 1958. Lucas described the site as consisting of a trackway which ran N-S across the bog - a longitudinal section 23m long was visible in the peat face (Lucas 1975, 13). It was c. 1.5m below the surface of the bog and appeared to be c. 2.4m wide. 'It was constructed of flat sandstone slabs, in some places laid singly and in others superimposed in as many as five layers to form a stratum about 38cm thick' which were laid on a layer of brushwood. A line of stakes driven into the peat bordered each site. A radiocarbon date (550 +/- 120 b.p.) was obtained from a yew-stump bearing axe-cuts which was found close to and at a similar depth to the trackway, giving a date of between 1280-1520 AD (Lucas 1977, 69). This date also provides a terminus antequem for the troughs which lay below the trackway. Also found were human bones, said to have been between the two troughs and a stone ball (diam. 6.9m) of fine-grained quartz sandstone on the trackway itself. A large section of the bog where this trackway was discovered has been cut away to natural. The current bog face was walked and some worked wood was found 1.4m below the current surface of the bog. The worked wood consists of a sub-structure of tightly packed brushwood 0.5-2cm in width in very poor condition and above this two widely spaced roundwoods (0.3m between them, very crude, 0.1m in diam., possibly birch). Two substructural longitudinal roundwoods are lying in a NE-SW direction.

The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary. Vol. 1 - North Tipperary' compiled by Jean Farrelly and Caimin O'Brien (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2002). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research.

Date of upload/revision: 22 September 2008