The designer who created the ideal Irish country house — then got to live in it

An hour north of Dublin, among the sort of emerald scenery that inspired Johnny Cash to write his ode to Ireland, Forty Shades of Green, is Ardbraccan House — a handsome, 18th-century limestone mansion originally constructed as the seat for the local Lord Bishop of Meath.

The 23,000-square-foot residence was built to striking Palladian designs laid out by two of the most celebrated Georgian architects, James Wyatt and Richard Castle (also known as Richard Cassels). It features a three-storey over basement, 11-bedroom main house, which is anchored to the ancient landscape by a pair of sweeping wings: a physical manifestation of Ardbraccan’s warm embrace.

‘It’s massive, but you could be there on your own and feel so happy,’ explains Serena Williams-Ellis, an interior designer who has overseen the home’s renovation not once, but twice. ‘It’s really a house that smiles at you.’ From 1 to 15 April 2026, Christie’s will offer more than 80 lots from Ardbraccan House — ranging from equestrian paintings to Irish furniture, Dutch ceramics and Persian carpets — as part of the Collections series of auctions in Paris, London and New York.

‘My hope is that every lot will be cherished in its new home, just as it has been in ours,’ says Williams-Ellis. ‘We are merely custodians — eventually, these works move on, finding new surroundings and becoming part of new stories.’

Williams-Ellis was born in England, but traces her roots in Ireland back many generations: her great-great-grandmother was Lady Mayoress of Dublin.

‘I left school with no idea of what I wanted to do,’ she recalls, ‘but I’d always trailed my mum around antiques shops, and loved the whole industry. So I got my first job at Christie’s in South Kensington, on £43 a month. I loved the weekly furniture sales, and they ended up with more of my salary than I did.’

By her early twenties, Williams-Ellis had begun selling antiques from temporary exhibitions at her home in London. The fortuitous sale of a Durham quilt sourced from the north of England made her £100 profit — enough at the time for a plane ticket to New York.

‘I went to see the decorating business Parish-Hadley, which was sort of the East Coast’s equivalent of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler,’ she says. ‘I took a marvellous album of flower watercolours that I’d bought in a sale in Devon and sold it for a small profit. I walked out the door pretty chuffed.’

Williams-Ellis became skilled at selling antiques sourced at the weekends from provincial auction houses to clients in London and New York. ‘I just bought things I thought were pretty, or charming, or slightly eclectic,’ she says. Then came the question: ‘Would you decorate our house?’

‘I thought, “Oh no. Fabrics, paint, that’s a headache. I’m only interested in the kit.” But eventually I designed some guest cottages for a house in Canada, advising on curtains and sofas and lampshades. From there it was another job, then another, and before I knew it, I was doing interiors.’

Around 1998, a client in Dublin introduced Williams-Ellis to David Maher, a property investor who had recently purchased Ardbraccan House. He asked if she was interested in taking on the project.

‘Because it had never belonged to one very powerful or rich family, Ardbraccan had this light touch to it. It had extraordinary panels in the dining room, and relief plasterwork. The skirting, door arches and chimney pieces even had these exquisite mouldings made from pressed pewter. But it’s not frilly or flouncy. It wasn’t trying to show off in any way — it was just very smart.

‘We had all the overpaint removed and everything restored by hand to get back to the original decoration. It took about four years. With a long project like that, though, you can quietly acquire things as you go along. It was a slow curation and there wasn’t a rush to fill it. It was a very organic process.’

She summarises her approach as ‘old meets new’. ‘I am quite a traditionalist, but I love contemporary things if they’re well designed. Tom Parr, the former designer at Colefax and Fowler, always said to me, “Put something ugly with something pretty”, and that’s become a bit of a mantra for me — I don’t like anything to match. I like people to be able to walk into a house and feel they can kick their shoes off. They could bring three dogs and six children and run all over the place and it wouldn’t matter.’

In 2013, Maher decided to sell the estate. At the time, Williams-Ellis’s partner Charles Noell was looking for a new stud farm to breed racehorses, and the designer realised it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to acquire one of her most cherished projects.

The couple bought Ardbraccan, lock, stock and barrel — although Williams-Ellis did update several areas to fit their own needs: ‘Part of it was a bit too formal and a bit too 18th-century for me. I needed to scruff it up a bit.’

She overhauled the house’s main saloon. ‘You come into it through the main hall, and it has eight doors leading off it. You can’t go anywhere in the house without going through the space, so I decided it should be our main living area, the beating heart of the home.

‘I wanted it to feel lived in. I put the biggest and most comfortable goose-down sofas you can imagine beside the fireplace, and had the fires lit and piles of books and newspapers everywhere. I also encouraged our gardener to get creative, and we’d have these unbelievable 4ft-high flower displays on the table. I avoided big, fancy, heavy, interlined curtains, instead having sheer linen sun curtains, because I didn’t want to take away from the view out to the pleasure gardens in the south.’

Another focal point of the room was its mid-18th-century Irish mahogany side table. ‘Every Irish home should have a really wonderful Irish table. They typically feature a lion’s mask in the middle, but this one has a pair of lovebirds. It also has the most wonderful patina, not over-cleaned or restored, just a slightly dry surface. It’s completely charming, and I’ve never seen another quite like it.’

The room also contained a set of George III side chairs, which were likely made for Lowther Castle in Cumbria and retain lovely worn green velvet upholstery. ‘They have an untouched feel and just sit there wonderfully,’ says Williams-Ellis.

The master bedroom was home to another of Williams-Ellis’s favourite pieces: a George IV mahogany four-poster bed, featuring a painted canopy and embroidered hangings, which she had adapted to modern-day proportions. ‘It’s so comfortable,’ she says. On the surrounding walls, she points out watercolours of birds by the celebrated 18th-century Irish animal painter Charles Collins.

At the top of the 92 stone steps that run from the basement to the uppermost floor, Williams-Ellis hung the Duke of Leinster’s robes from the House of Lords. ‘They were part of a sale of the contents of Carton House [ancestral home of the Dukes of Leinster], bundled up in a plastic bag. I had them hand-stitched on linen and framed. I love the deep reds and the ermine. They’re so decorative and flamboyant.’

And at the bottom of the staircase, she stored a 19th-century ‘bone shaker’ bicycle. ‘That was Charlie’s bit of madness,’ she says. ‘We kept it leaning against the wall under an 18th-century portrait of the Bishop of Meath. My children always wanted to ride it down the corridor. Every house needs a bit of folly and madness.’

True to her style, across every room Williams-Ellis also blended Dutch and English portraits by Gerrit van Honthorst and Sir Joshua Reynolds with Victorian oils of hounds by John Emms, photographs by Helmut Newton and a three-quarter-length painting of her great-great-grandmother by Walter Frederick Osborne, Ireland’s most accomplished Impressionist.

‘The collection is a mish-mash, but I just bring things into a house that make you want to smile. It’s just a feeling you get. It’s like being attracted to somebody — you can’t buy that, it’s chemistry. I try and recreate that chemistry, which makes you feel incredibly at home and relaxed,’ she says. ‘Ardbraccan is a house that opens its arms and puts a hug around you.’

Collections: Including Ardbraccan House, Ireland and a Sicilian Palazzo is live for bidding until 15 April 2026, and is on view at Christie’s in London from 9 April. Explore Christie’s Collections sales