Almost every owner of Marlee House, in Perthshire, whose records date back to 1484, bequeathed something to future occupants. James Farquharson, for example, extended the house in the mid-1700s into its present symmetrical shape. A J Meacher installed a rare pipe organ, the home entertainment centre of its day, in 1914. In the 1970s the Jamesons carved family crests of former Marlee owners, which now hang over the elegant dining room fireplace. Then, in the early 1990s, the Irvine Robertsons modernised Marlee and changed the dressing rooms to bathrooms. More mischievously, they left miniature whisky bottles in the lavatory cisterns, and a bottle of good port they hid in the house is yet to be found.

But top prize surely goes to John Brown, an Edinburgh solicitor who owned the Georgian country house in the mid-1800s. He loved Marlee so much that he left himself. His columned tomb sits about 100 metres from the Grade A-listed house.

Tucked away on 10 acres of hills and farmland in Kinloch, two miles west of Blairgowrie, the eight-bedroom Marlee House has come onto the market for the first time in 16 years, complete with Loch Marlee and formal gardens.

As you might expect from a centuries-old house, there is a mountain of Marlee memorabilia and tantalising titbits that reveal its rich past. Farquharson, who also owned the Invercauld Estate, near Braemar, for example, bought Marlee in 1757. He expanded it, but there is no architect on record, causing some to say that he pinched the design from the celebrated Adam brothers.

The records also show that Farquharson changed the name from The Mansion House to Marlee House. It is thought that he renamed it for the huge quantity of marl, a substance, used in fertilisers, that he discovered at the bottom of the loch and made a fortune selling.

As for Meacher, who loved organ music, a handwritten letter from him to Harrison and Harrison of Durham, an organ maker, shows that he was not to be trifled with. “I presume your price of £480 includes everything . . . ” he wrote, and then whinged about the £34 price of the case.

Historical nitty-gritty is only part of Marlee’s story. To Nicolette Lumsden, 67, the present owner, the house is about family. It was left to her last year when her husband, Kenneth, originally from Aberdeenshire and a former captain in the Gordon Highlanders, died after a short illness.

One of his last wishes was to have a profound effect on Lumsden. “He told me to sell the house,” she says. He did not want her saddled with the responsibility of running it. “I couldn’t sell it last year because it was all too raw. Now I feel that it’s right.”

It was a second marriage for both of them and when they bought Marlee in 1993 each had three children from their previous marriages. Lumsden had lived in the area before and remembers stumbling upon the house while beating for a neighbour’s pheasant shoot. “It was love at first sight,” she said. “The symmetry, the pavilions: it was just gorgeous.”

Shortly after they married in 1993, Lumsden was scouring a magazine in search of a perfect family country house. She turned the page and there was Marlee. They wasted no time in grabbing it. To a visitor, the long, tree-lined driveway, which ends in a circle in front of Marlee’s formal exterior, makes you half wonder whether Mr Bingley is about to fling open the front door to greet you. However, once inside all sense of formality disappears and you find yourself in a warm and inviting period treasure.

The Lumsdens wanted to make Marlee a comfortable family home while replicating the style of the 1700s. Historic paint colours such as apple green, that old Georgian favourite, abound on the walls.

Colefax and Fowler chintz and genteel period wallpaper are scattered among the rooms. Prints by the 19th-century Scottish artist R R McIan, known for his drawings of clans, line the long entrance hall. A cloakroom (the house has six bathrooms) features an oversized wooden lavatory seat and cistern common in Victorian days.