What is recorded here

Post row in County Offaly is a 125m triple-line pathway of hazel, oak and ash stakes driven into Ballaghurt Bog, its lower ends cut with chisel and wedge tools. The dryland end still holds paired parallel rows and oblique brushwood clusters, while the far end thins to widely spaced posts beneath peat. The structure may have guided people across wet ground or marked a boundary, but the bog has taken most of it back.

A row of posts and stakes (L 125m; Wth 3.7m; D 0.98m) running ESE-WNW from the bog fringes close to an esker ridge in Clonfinlough townland out into Ballaghurt Bog. The structure consists of a triple row of posts and stakes with longitudinal brushwood at the dryland end but it reduced to a single line of widely spaced posts at the other end. For most of its length this structure was in the process of being destroyed, but in three high fields it was covered by peat to a maximum depth of approximately 0.7m. It was investigated at two locations along its length. At the dryland end the site it is composed of paired parallel stake rows 1.2m apart and the interval between the uprights averages 0.3m. A third row converges obliquely with the other two and is composed of clusters of uprights up to five posts wide with associated brushwood (diam. 0.015-0.045m). The posts and stakes (L 0.17-0.98m; diam. 0.025-0.07m) were set at angles of 35-90°. Bark survived on many uprights. Hazel, oak and ash were the identified species and the lower ends worked into chisel and wedge points with distinctive concave and flat tool facets. (Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit (UCD) 1993, 98-99) Compiled by: Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit (University College Dublin). Date of upload: 23 May 2011

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