He was known as “the son of thunder”. He defied kings, denounced bishops and ultimately went to his death for his belief in man's individual contract with God. The Covenanter Richard Cameron was considered so dangerous a religious extremist that when he was killed in 1680, his head and hands were severed from his dead body and exhibited in Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

So it's perhaps curious that his followers - a battle-hardened bunch who would walk for days to attend week-long preaching sessions - should have erected a chapel in such a vale of tranquillity.

The underground sect had held their biggest outdoor meetings at Quarrelwood - a site nestled in the Lowther Hills, above the river Nith, five miles north of Dumfries. By 1798, however, the Cameronians, as they had become known, were sufficiently confident that they built an octagonal chapel on the site, and a manse where the preachers could stay.

There is no trace of the violence

and fervour that caused Quarrelwood House to be built. Its walls are fashioned from red sandstone; the downstairs windows are tripartite openings in the Venetian style, with arched tops; over the front door is an elegant fan light. The chapel is now a hardwood-floored living room, illuminated by five round-arched windows. There are two other reception rooms, and four bedrooms.

It serves as the home of Katharine and Professor Paul Ignatieff, aunt and uncle of Michael Ignatieff, the television intellectual who is now deputy leader of the Canadian Liberal party. But although the Ignatieffs have lived here for just four years, their association with the house goes back much further.

“I grew up in this area and remember the house as a semi-derelict building that served as a hand laundry during the second world war”, says Katharine. “In the late 1960s my uncle lived just down the road. He had always thought that it was a fine building that deserved to be renovated, so he approached the owner.”

As luck would have it, this was a friend and neighbour, who agreed a lease on the house for the extraordinary price of £1 a year for the rest of Katharine's uncle's and aunt's life. With this agreement in place, her uncle set about rescuing the building and turning it into the desirable home it is today. His wife lived well into the 1990s, so the lease agreement turned out to be a very considerable bargain.

The Ignatieffs started their married lives in Canada, but Paul's work for the United Nations has taken them to postings all over the world. Upon retirement 12 years ago, they returned to Katharine's native Dumfriesshire - first to a big house in Moniaive, and more recently to the far from modest Quarrelwood.

Katharine explains their decision to sell up: “We have a home in southern France and, as we get older, we want to get as much sun as we can.”

The Cameronians themselves did not spend long at the site. They had abandoned the buildings by 1825, little more than a quarter of a century after they had been built.

However, from 1689, the name of the Cameronians was adopted by an infantry regiment. In 1968, when the regiment was disbanded, the regimental chaplin gave a stirring oration, concluding: “As you march out of the Army List, you are marching into history, and from your proud place there, no man can snatch a rose from the chaplet of your honour.”

The same is surely true of Quarrelwood House. Whatever violence and passion forged the Covenanting tradition, there was certainly a beauty at its heart that has found enduring expression in these buildings.

Strutt and Parker invites offers of more than £550,0000, 01312 262500, www.struttandparker.co.uk

Times recommends

• Fall in house sales hits builders, estate agents and mortgage brokers
• Why the property credit crunch favours cash buyers
• The blood-curdling history of Quarrelwood House