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| Detail of Corlea Trackway, County Longford, Ireland Photo: Flickr |
Ancient Origins website featured the Corlea Trackway in
County Longford on 14th April 2018.
This important archaeological site warrants wider publicity because of
its unique nature and the excellent visitor centre built on the site.
The Corlea Trackway, known in Irish as Bóthar Chorr Liath, is
a timber trackway dated to the Iron Age. This ancient trackway is located near
Keenagh, a village to the south of Longford, in County Longford. It was
discovered during the 1980s, when it was exposed during the harvesting of peat.
Today, the Corlea Trackway is on permanent display in a specially constructed
exhibition centre built at the site of the discovery.
This trackway is composed of oak planks resting on a foundation of birch
rails. Based on tree ring dating (known also as dendrochronology) conducted at
Queen’s University Belfast, it was determined that the trees used to build the
trackway were felled either in late 148 BC or early 147 BC.
Largest Wooden Trackway in Europe
Corlea is the largest wooden trackway or togher discovered in Europe, spanning
about one kilometre of bogland and is about three and a half meters wide. It is
estimated that three hundred large oak trees were felled to create the planks
and about the same amount of birch was needed for the rails. This equates to
about a thousand wagon-loads of construction material.
The first routes in Ireland
were prehistoric trackways, some of which were later developed into
roads suitable for wheeled vehicles. Trackways typically date to the
early to middle Neolithic period, the Middle and Late Bronze Age, early Iron Age
(c. 500-300 BC) and throughout the early medieval and late medieval periods.
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| Detail of preserved section of Corlea Trackway Photo: Wikimedia |
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| Wooden Wheel, Doogarymore, County Roscommon |
Further Trackways Discovered
Research carried cut by Dr. Barry Raftery of
University College, Dublin, over the five-year period 1985 - 1989, in the Mountdillon
complex of bogland, Co. Longford, has done much to increase our knowledge of
this hitherto neglected aspect of our history. (Trackways Through Time
by Barry Raftery - Headline Publishing). During this time some 57 tracks were
excavated, some extensively, and more to a limited degree. Excavations up
to 1991 in Corlea bog discovered 59 toghers in an area of
around 125 hectares while further work increased the total to 108 with a
further 76 revealed in the nearby Derryoghil bog.
Peatland once covered some 16% of the land
surface of Ireland. Prior to modern drainage much of central Ireland consisted
of soggy marshland interspersed with areas of dry land. This presented enormous
problems for the ancient traveller whose existence involved moving about the
land. The early inhabitants of Ireland lived on the uplands where they looked
after their herds and cultivated the land, which would have been surrounded by
large areas of wetland.
It is unclear how the Corlea Trackway was used by the Iron Age people
living in the locality. Some archaeologists, for instance, have argued that our
ancestors used the trackway to cross the bog. Others, however, believe the
trackway allowed people to travel into the bog, where rituals could be carried
out.
The life of these ancient roadways would have
been short in view of the extremely wet conditions in the continually growing
bog. The trackways would quickly sink into the soft peat and become covered in
vegetation. Projecting pegs would have marked the route through the bog after
the walking surface had become obscured.
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| Corlea Visitor Centre Photo: Longford Tourism |
Hundreds of ancient bog bodies have been discovered in the boglands of
Europe over the last few centuries, of which about 130 have been found in
Ireland. Most of bog bodies date from the Iron Age. Experts
believe that many of the Irish Iron Age bog bodies are the remains of former
kings who were sacrificed.
Today, some 18 meters (60 ft) of the Corlea Trackway is on permanent
display within the Visitor Centre. A boardwalk, which follows the course of the
remaining trackway that is still buried under the bog, was constructed to allow
visitors to have a sense of how the Corlea Trackway may have looked during the
Iron Age. The Corlea Trackway ended on a small island from which a second
trackway, also radiocarbon dated to 148 BC, connected to dry land on the
far side of the bog. This second trackway was also around one kilometre long.
Conclusion
The Corlea Trackway was built from trees
felled either in late 148 BC or early 147 BC giving us a precise date for
its construction. It was a major building project for its time requiring a high
level of both skill and social organisation. The trackway was preserved by the
unique conditions which exist in our boglands. While we cannot say for sure why
the Corlea Trackway was built all those years ago, we can marvel at such an
achievement. The visitor centre housing the trackway provides a wealth of
information on this and other bogland discoveries but do check the opening
times if you are planning a visit.
For further information please see:
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