Muriel Gibson points at one of the windows in the guest bedroom at the far end of her house.
It’s set slightly lower than you feel a window normally would be. “That used to be the opening through which the threshing machine used to fire grain up into the loft,” she explains.
Nether Camserney is full of such lovely touches that speak to the way it once was used.
The former grain mill sits up a track past the hamlet of Weem, almost three miles outside Aberfeldy.
It was already converted into a house when Muriel and her husband Archie bought it 18 years ago but one end of the house had been left out of the conversion.
The couple amended that, putting in an upstairs sitting room with a wood burning stove and windows on three sides. They also added an extra bedroom to make room for their three children.
The lower level of the house is dominated by a large open plan kitchen-dining room. Solid timber beams and an exposed stone wall make the a characterful space.
Two sets of stairs lead you to the first floor. The most recently installed, made of steel and timber, lead to the open plan first floor lounge which enjoys views over the Perthshire countryside.
Altogether there are four bedrooms, three en suite, and a study.
The house is well insulated and a biomass boiler provides environmentally friendly heat and hot water. Solar panels adorn one of the roofs.
One of Nether Camserney’s many delights is its range of outbuildings, arranged in an L-shape around a courtyard. I spend a happy 10 minutes exploring them.
There are a couple of big barns, providing scope for entertaining spaces, a home gym, or even conversion – there is lapsed planning permission for a two bedroom cottage.
Another building has one side open to the garden and is a fantastic place to have a BBQ or – as is the case when I’m there – sit and watch the summer rain come down outside.
There’s also a laundry room, and another building houses a vintage tractor.
Then there’s the longhouse, which has a wonderful history. “It would originally have been used to house drovers bringing cattle down to sell at the markets in Crieff,” Muriel says.
“It has three fires in it, all from different eras of its history. The drovers would have slept at one end and their livestock at the other.”
The garden stretches to an acre and there’s a 1.8 acre paddock that extends to the Camserney Burn, which flows down into the nearby River Tay.
With their three children all grown up, the house has grown too big for community nurse Muriel (54) and Archie (57), who manages a seed potato company. They’ve bought a plot of land near Dunkeld and commissioned architect James Denholm to design a home for them.
“We’ll miss this house, of course, but we’re looking forward to designing something really special for ourselves. We’re not old enough for the scrapheap yet!”
Nether Camserney is on sale with Savills for offers over £550,000