What makes it worth a second look is the layering of its defences: a central enclosure roughly 26 by 23 metres across, ringed by a low bank and an external fosse, and then, along the south-west to north-west arc, a second outer bank beyond the fosse. That doubled earthwork, a bank, then a ditch, then another bank, marks this out as something more carefully constructed than the average single-rampart rath.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when built from earthen banks rather than stone, were the standard form of enclosed farmstead across early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. Most housed a single family and their livestock, with the enclosing bank serving as much for status and animal management as for serious defence. The Quigabar example follows that general pattern, though its double earthwork on the western side hints at a site whose builders wanted to make a point. The interior rises slightly at the centre before sloping down toward the east and south-east, and a poorly defined gap of two to three metres on the south-south-east side may represent the original entrance, now much eroded. Local tradition also holds that a souterrain lies within the interior. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage, often used in the early medieval period for storage or as a place of refuge, and their presence within ringforts is common enough across Ireland to be considered almost characteristic of the type. Whether one genuinely runs beneath this particular enclosure has not been formally confirmed, but such oral traditions frequently preserve real memory of features long since hidden from view.