[1] The granite mausoleum was built to house the remains of the Howard family near Shelton Abbey, close to Arklow in County Wicklow.

[1][2][3] The first burial to take place there was Isabella Howard, the Vicount's daughter who died at nineteen in December 1784, a year before the pyramid was built.

There is a local ghost story of the body of an infant being interred in the monument which cried at night until taken and reburied elsewhere.

[4][1] In writing about the location John Betjeman described it as the largest pyramid tomb ‘beyond the banks of the Nile’.

[5][1] There is a second tomb housing another branch of the family, often mistaken for part of the pyramid.