This is the receiving vault at Sheldon Cemetery in Sheldon, Vermont.
Receiving vaults were popular into the 1900s. The purpose of a receiving vault or receiving tomb was to store a body temporarily.
Reasons included:
-such time until people could dig the ground for burial
-the family could afford to bury their loved one
-a mausoleum or crypt could be built
-even to store the bodies of those who died during an epidemic.
Although for the latter, sometimes those bodies were refused. The concern was the vault would become contaminated.
Receiving vaults were rendered obsolete when machinery was able to break through frozen ground.