1986:34 - TIMAHOE WEST, Kildare

The site is in an area of a large bog where only a few narrow banks of raised bog peat survive after many years cutting by Bord na Mona. There are two distinct tracks in one of these banks: a flimsy path made of birch logs (discovered by D. Cummins, an amateur fieldwalker), and a substantial track built mainly of oak planks (part of which was excavated by E. Rynne in the 1960s). Both lie within or below a thin layer of biophorum peat, and thus must be almost contemporary, but the place where they would have intersected has been cut away.

Bord na Móna wanted to remove the remaining peat banks and agreed to fund a rescue excavation, which took place during four weeks of November 1986. Although the bank was only 10m wide, the birch track ran almost exactly parallel to it and was cut in several places by the face of the section. The excavation exposed two areas of it, one 35m long, the other 6m long, showing that it was built of logs laid end to end in an irregular pattern with, at most, four logs in any section of the track. They were under 2m long and only 0.1m in diameter, without any signs of carpentry beyond a rough trimming of their ends. The track did not include brushwood or thin roundwood.

The oak track cut across the bank obliquely, so only 25m of it survived (although another fragment is preserved in a peat bank 200m away). Tree-ring dating showed that there were two phases: one at 1483 BC associated with thin longitudinal planks and possibly the lower part of a layer of roundwood 0.15m thick, the other at 1378 BC associated with the upper part of the roundwood layer, transversely laid logs and planks, and an upper covering of massive longitudinal oak planks and a yew log. Several planks had morticed ends, but there were no stakes in the holes.