It marks the burial of Lady Susanna Newenham, dated 1754, and serves as the family monument of the Newenhams of Coolmore House. It is an unusually formal piece of funerary architecture for a parish graveyard, and it is far from the only one: chest tombs, a large gabled burial vault to the south-east, and inscribed headstones running back to 1690 give the roughly rectangular enclosure, about fifty metres east to west and eighty metres north to south, a layered quality that repays slow attention.

The church at the centre of the graveyard, St. Mary's Church of Ireland, was built in 1823 in the neo-Gothic style to a design by the Pain brothers, James and George Richard Pain, who were among the most prolific architects working in Munster during the early nineteenth century. A brass tablet above the door still carries their inscription: "Jas. & G: R: PAIN / ARCHts / 1823". A north transept was added in 1835. But the church occupies ground with a far longer religious history. An earlier parish church stood on the same site, described in 1700 as "above 70 foot long, well slated and well furnished with seats", and a detached stone recorded by the local historian O'Leary noted that "this church was rebuilt in the year of our saviour Christ, 1723". By 1750 it was described as being "in decent order", though no surface trace of it survives today. Inside the present church a font dated 1637 predates all of these recorded phases, a quiet reminder that the site's use stretches back well before any of the structures historians managed to describe in writing.