Waddell-Cunningham-Douglas Monument, Knockbreda Parish Church of Ireland, Church Road, Belfast, County Down, BT8 7AN

The Waddell-Cunningham-Douglas Monument is a free-standing stone mausoleum erected around 1800 in the graveyard of Knockbreda Parish Church, located to the northeast of the church. It is one of the finest examples of late eighteenth-century funerary architecture in Ulster, employing Adamesque detailing fashionable at the time.

The mausoleum is square on plan with four equal elevations. It stands on a continuous plinth base. Each elevation features a round-arched central panel with an inscribed memorial plaque, flanked by paired Doric pilasters with swagged entablature. Engaged Doric columns frame the corners. The entablature is adorned with an urn at each corner and crowned by a convex roof section surmounted by four pinnacles, each framing a spiked roof also crowned with an urn. The structure is built of sandstone.

The tomb commemorates Waddell Cunningham, who died in 1797, and his family. Waddell Cunningham (1728/9–1797) was the son of John Cunningham and his wife Jane Waddell. By 1752 he was trading in meal in New York and became partner of Belfast merchant Thomas Greg. The firm of Greg & Cunningham traded in flaxseed, purchasing it in America and selling it in Ireland. During the Seven Years' War between Britain and France (1759–1763), Cunningham and Greg obtained Crown licence to act as privateers, enabling them to attack enemy vessels and recover their cargoes including slave-grown sugar, coffee, tobacco and cotton. After the war they established a sugar plantation called 'Belfast' on the island of Dominica. Cunningham returned to Ireland and initiated several new business ventures with Greg, including the manufacture of vitriol for bleaching, fisheries in Donegal and Sligo exporting herrings as slave food, and trading in horses and mules for sugar and tobacco. He also held interests in shipping, brewing, glass manufacture and flour milling, becoming the foremost Belfast merchant of his era. He served briefly as an MP, was the first president of Belfast's Chamber of Commerce, and headed the Ballast Board (later the Belfast Harbour Commissioners) in the 1780s, overseeing the deepening of Belfast's harbour. Cunningham died childless in 1797 and his property passed to James Douglas, the youngest son of his sister. Waddell Cunningham Douglas of the 17th Lancers, a descendant, died in 1904 and was also buried in the tomb.

The mausoleum does not appear on historic Ordnance Survey maps. During the eighteenth century, Protestants were typically buried in the old parish graveyard in High Street, Belfast, but this graveyard was closed to new burials in 1798 due to persistent flooding problems, after which Knockbreda became a popular burial place for Belfast's most prominent citizens. Four large mausolea were erected in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, all square on plan with elegant Adamesque arrangements of Classical columns, pilasters and entablatures. One was demolished in the later twentieth century. The remaining three, including this monument, fell into poor condition before restoration by the Follies Trust around 2010. These structures are described as the oddest and finest buildings of their genre in Ulster. Belfast's position as a port may have exposed it to architectural influences from overseas, particularly India, where similar funerary monuments became common by the mid-eighteenth century. Published designs may also have influenced their design. Roger Mulholland, a notable local architect, has been suggested as their designer, though documentary evidence is lacking.

The mausoleum has group value with the nearby listed Rainey, Goddard and Greg mausolea and Knockbreda Parish Church. The structure was fully restored in 2010 by the Follies Trust under the supervision of Chris McCollum.