Beyond the various staff rooms and bedrooms on the third floor is the entrance to the tower, which has a 360-degree view of a delightful wooded valley and other large houses such as Maxwelton House, where Robert Burns encountered Annie Laurie.

The fact that Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and Alan Grant, the renowned comic book writer, have set up home in nearby Moniaive has certainly lent a new cachet to the area and created a property hot spot.

Castle says: “The number of large houses that can be seen from Crawfordton suggests this is an area that has always held an attraction for the very well-off — the celebrities moving in have brought a welcome renewed awareness of the area.”

Castle thinks it is doubtful that a another rock star will move to the area. He thinks it is more likely that it will be a buyer who would have normally considered only Northumberland or the Lake District.

He adds: “Buyers are now venturing a little further and discovering the charms of Dumfries and Galloway, and as prices continue to rise in the Lake District, this trend is likely to continue. Already there are people moving here who commute to Newcastle to work.”

Offers in the region of £1.3m are invited for Crawfordton House.

Shaun Castle, Lakes and Country, 01228 516 409

Crawfordton will be by no means the first independent school in Scotland to close and be converted to housing. Indeed, although the number of children attending independent schools in Scotland has risen slightly in recent years, the number of schools has fallen relentlessly.

The Park School, which once occupied a series of interconnected houses in the Glasgow neighbourhood from which it took its name, was converted into flats in the mid- 1990s. Arthurstone, the former home of the Butterstone School in Perthshire, is now in the late stages of conversion into apartments.

Rannoch school, beside Loch Rannoch, and also in Perthshire, became a single private house after it closed five years ago, and much of the surrounding staff accommodation has been sold off since.

And Croftinloan, by Pitlochry, was sold to a private homeowner when it closed in 2000. Several new homes have been built in the grounds since then, but as yet the school itself remains much as it was when the register was last called.

In fact, if you scratch the surface it becomes clear there are very few large houses in Scotland that have not served an educational function at some time. Taymouth Castle in Perthsire was a civil defence training school, Whittinghame in East Lothian was a traning college for young farmers and Fort Augustus, by Loch Ness, was a Catholic boys’ boarding school.

There is nothing surprising about any of this. Vast country houses were a particular feature of Britain from early in Victoria’s reign until the outbreak of the first world war. The precipitous decline in country houses — occasioned by the workforce going to war, the decline in agricultural income and rise in death duties — left countless elaborate homes in need of a new use. Schools were happy to make use of the cheap accommodation.

In today’s property market, it is almost inconceivable that a school could take over a distinguished country house.

The demise of draughty dormitories might be welcomed, but it seems a shame that an age where a lucky few were able to experience the life of a country aristocrat is over.

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