County: Longford Site name: DERRYNAGRAN AND DERRYMANNY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E0974
Author: Jane Whitaker, ADS Ltd.
Site type: Road - class 1 togher
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 607599m, N 761231m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.600874, -7.885187
This site was identified during survey work in 1999, at which time it was recorded in two separate locations 15m apart. A single cutting measuring 4m by 5m was excavated at the eastern extent of the site, where the site was thought to be fully intact. Five test-trenches were also excavated to ensure that the two sightings were in fact part of the same site.
The overlying peat was 0.2–0.5m deep. The site itself was composed of several layers of mainly brushwood rods, with some roundwoods deposited at right angles, forming a hurdle-like arrangement of east–west and north–south elements. The brushwood ranged from 9mm to 50mm in diameter, and the roundwoods from 50mm to 80mm. A tree root overlay the trackway surface in the northern extent of the cutting. Nineteen toolmarks were noted in this context, most of which were flat, which had been cut with a metal tool. Four trenches were investigated on the field surface west of the cutting, to establish a connection between the two sightings and to investigate the consistency of the composition of the site. Several patches of similar brushwood were exposed on the field surfaces farther to the west. Some of these had been recorded during the 1999 survey as separate sites, but it is now believed that they formed part of a single togher structure. It was not possible to trace any additional sightings farther west than the centre of the bog, as the adjoining fields to the west were at a considerably lower level than those to the east. The remaining surviving length of the site was therefore 80m.
Windsor House, 11 Fairview Strand, Fairview, Dublin 3
