What is recorded here

At Castletown Bog in County Offaly, men chopped flat ends onto roundwoods and laid them across killing wet peat. They built a road, not a house, and the road is gone under tonnes of black water and time. The platform remains because wood resists rot where oxygen cannot reach it. Every strip of peat removed for fire or field is another chamber opened, another road revealed, another life made visible only to be erased again.

This site is located in the industrial peatlands of Castletown Bog. It was first identified in the Reassessment Peatland Survey in 2013, located at the S extent of the narrowest part of the bog, and was classified as a Class 3 Road (Whitaker 2014). On excavation in 2016 (licence 15E0189), it was revealed that the site consisted of multiple associated brushwood and roundwood platforms. In the second cutting (OF-CTN003b), located 15m north of Cutting 1 and measuring 6x4m, excavation revealed two associated but separate structures. The one concerned here consisted of several NW-SE orientated roundwoods and brushwoods, located to the NE. Some worked ends were noted, all with flat metal-cut toolmarks. Compiled by: Jane Whitaker/Femke Vleeshouwer Date of upload: 8th April 2020

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.