County: Offaly Site name: RATHDRUM
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 05E0552
Author: Sinclair Turrell, ADS Ltd.
Site type: Road - class 1 togher
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 642982m, N 728302m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.303269, -7.355133
Following on from the Peatland Survey 2001 carried out by the Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit (IAWU), a six-week programme of excavation was carried out at Daingean South Bog, part of Bord na Móna’s Derrygreenagh group of works, between May and June 2005. The southern part of the bog, where the sites were concentrated, had been prepared for production, with fields levelled and drains cut but, at the time of the excavation, no milling had taken place. Seven sites were excavated, together with a survey of all the associated sightings. Excavation was accompanied by an extensive programme of palaeoenvironmental sampling carried out by Archaeoscape Ltd.
This site was surveyed by the IAWU in July 2001 and identified as a primary togher, running for 559m in an east–west direction, with one plank being dendro-dated to AD 773±9 or later (OF-RDM0001). Five cuttings were excavated along the course of the trackway and 22 further sightings were recorded.
This single-plank trackway was of simple construction, with oak planks, up to 3.3m long and 0.5m wide, being laid end to end. There were no pegs or transverses present at the eastern end of the trackway, although mortise holes were present in some of the planks, often offset to one side of the centre-line. The construction did differ slightly across the trackway, with some pegs and transverses occurring towards the western end. The bog may have been softer here, necessitating a different method of construction, a question that the environmental results may be able to resolve. The planks here were very narrow, but there were notches on the edge of some of the plank terminals, probably the remains of mortise holes, which suggests that part of the plank may have split off and become detached. This trackway is on a different alignment to the others investigated in Daingean South Bog and it possibly linked settlement sites on the western side of the bog with the ecclesiastical complex at Killaderry, which, although some distance from the bog, is directly in line with the course of the trackway.
Windsor House, 11 Fairview Strand, Fairview, Dublin 3
