IT is the smallest property on the books and one of the last remaining examples of a cruck frame cottage.

Now heritage bosses have painstakingly recreated the story of the farming family that lived in Moirlanich Longhouse in Glen Lochay, near Killin, Perthshire, generations ago.

And stepping into the timeless atmosphere of the house and viewing its contents offers a fascinating insight into rural family life in 19th-century Scotland.

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Cared for by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), the beautifully conserved property and its many original features hark back to a simpler age when the longhouse was once common in rural Scotland.

Such properties were linear and provided accommodation for both the family and animals – mainly cattle – under one roof and on the same level.

At the end of the 1800s, though, there was a general move away from these old dwellings.

Moirlanich, however, remained untouched.

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The name Moirlanich comes from the Gaelic term for “the plain of the west-land”.

It is thought this derives from the fact there were once two townships on the level fields of Glen Lochay: Easter Moirlanich and Wester Moirlanich.

The longhouse, experts believe, was in the westernmost of the two townships.

Old photographs showing the structure just as it was back then reveal how the family who stayed there continued with an older, gentler style of living as the years passed by.

Four generations of the Robertson family of Glen Lochay, who were local horse breeders and kept dairy cows, lived in the property from the 1850s to the 1960s, where the animals would sleep at night in the adjoining byre, separated only by a wooden partition.

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Often, three generations lived in the house together, although by the 1930s, the occupants were all unmarried adults – siblings and their cousins or nephews who were brought to live in and help on the farm.

The last inhabitant, Tom Proctor, moved out in the 1960s, leaving the house relatively untouched until it was bought by the NTS in 1992.

The display hut, which was once the Robertson’s tool shed, has an exhibition of documents, photographs and information relating to the history and restoration of the house.

Items of clothing discovered when the longhouse was purchased by the Trust are also on display and visitors can see many original features, including the box beds and a “hingin’ lum”, as well as layers of early 20th-century wallpaper.

They can also observe the “cruck frame” – the frame of curved timber that supports the roof of a building in a style that was once common in Scotland.

Meanwhile, the kitchen and best room have also been restored to show how they would have looked in days gone by.

A spokesman for the NTS said the longhouse and the “small fragments of daily life” it holds would enable visitors to imagine a completely different way of life.

The dairy, kitchen, and ‘best room’ within the building have all been restored to how they would have looked in the early 20th century.

“When Moirlanich was purchased by the Trust it was in a very sorry state,” he said. “However, the fact it has never been modernised is regarded as intrinsic to its charm.

“Following sympathetic restoration in the 1990s, all the key characteristics of the house have been preserved and the NTS continues to maintain the house with a “less is more” approach today.

“Moirlanich Longhouse challenges our imaginations,” said the NTS spokesman.

“It encourages us to consider a very different way of living, experienced through the enveloping atmosphere inside the house and the small fragments of daily life that the Robertsons and Tom Proctor left behind.”