Two years ago, the pretty market town of Cupar broke every record in the book after a phenomenal year of growth. In the previous decade, Cupar had posted an incredible 143% growth in the average house price since 1996 (up from £65,547 to £159,332). During the same period, Fife’s prices racked up 97% growth, 3% more than the national average.

Prices in the town are not expected to fall this year, either, and that has to be good news for Chris O’Brien, the owner of Middlefield House.

Like nearby Seggie House and Melville House, Middlefield House is part of a clutch of elite rural homes in north Fife. Given their suitability as golfing bases (within striking distance of St Andrews), for corporate hospitality or as equestrian centres, such properties are increasingly popular with buyers.

Middlefield was built in the 1750s for Cupar’s Lord Provost. It was bought by the Watt family in 1823, whose interests extended to both running the local jail and overseeing a seed merchant empire. Middlefield remained in the same ownership until 2000, and O’Brien, an accountant, bought it in 2005 and has been renovating it since.

There is no doubt it is a fine Georgian house. The facade has a stone balustrade and large bay window, and privacy is maintained by a stately, tree-lined gravel drive.

There are three impressive south-facing reception rooms with restored fireplaces as focal points, and attractive decorative cornicing. Middlefield has six bedrooms as well as office facilities, and there is development potential for a four-room flat on the lower ground floor. A formal lawn sits adjacent to one of three paddocks, and a wooden gate leads to a sheltered walled garden featuring an ornamental pond.

The Kingdom of Fife is effectively the kingdom of golf, with the game’s mecca of St Andrews, which regularly hosts both the British Open and the Dunhill Masters. There are more than 40 golf courses on this small peninsula. Both Edinburgh and Dundee are well served by the east-coast mainline, and the station 1½ miles away in Cupar.

Golf has been a way of life in Fife for 500 years. Where else can you play a New Course that is now more than 100 years old? (It had to be called New when it was laid out in 1895 to distinguish it from its neighbour, the Old Course, which — so it seemed — had been there for ever.)

With local accommodation commanding massive rental premiums during championships, O’Brien says: “Middlefield is an obvious candidate for development into a top-class country house hotel, as a corporate hospitality facility for wining and dining golf parties or simply a beautifully appointed family home, ideal for people with an interest in horses.”

It is currently being marketed by Savills at offers over £995,000.

O’Brien, 35, has put a whole new spin on the downsizing theme. With his firm’s interests extending to the west of Scotland, the accountant not long ago swapped the idyllic paddocks, private gardens and rolling country views of this Fife stately home for the workaday delights of the Matrix development north of Glasgow’s city centre.

“It really is a case of going from the sublime to the ridiculous,” he says. “My work has taken me to Glasgow, so instead of commuting, my two dogs and I have decamped from our dream home set in picturesque grounds for a functional city bolt hole overlooking office blocks, nondescript business hotels and urban no-man’s land.

“I don’t know what I was thinking really. I needed to get a base established quickly, and I was seduced by the flashy design of the Matrix, and bought here pretty much on a whim.”

He now splits his time between Middlefield House and the Glasgow apartment, and admits he bought the flat in haste, and is repenting at leisure.

“The flat was very much an impulse purchase,” he says. “It’s easy to be wise after the event but I should have done more research prior to jumping in.”

O’Brien plans to rent out his flat and take his time finding a new home in Bothwell, Lanarkshire, an upmarket location that he says will be perfect for both his offices in Kirkcaldy and Glasgow. First, though, he has set himself the task of selling off the country house.

“I’ve brought a lot of original features back up to their best, rewired, added central heating, made the windows watertight and decorated extensively,” says O’Brien.

It will be the new owners who get the benefit of his labours. Having swapped his dream house for a dreary urban vista, O’Brien says: “Part of me would like to hold on to Middlefield, but really these houses need the hustle and bustle of large families or big parties to be seen at their best. It’s a waste to see Middlefield housing just one man and his dogs.”

Savills, 0131 247 3706, www.savills.co.uk

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