The scene of a notorious central Victorian kidnapping once labelled the “crime of the century” has come up for sale.

The Faraday schoolhouse, 115 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, was the location of the 1972 Faraday School kidnapping — one of Australia’s most infamous mass abductions. A young teacher and her six students were taken hostage at the school by masked gunmen, who demanded a $1 million ransom from the government for their safe return.

But that notoriety was far from the front of agent Dominic Romeo’s mind when he listed the historic granite stone schoolhouse earlier this month.

“Some people know about [the kidnapping] … that was so long ago,” said Mr Romeo, who specialises in historic building sales for Great Real Estate.

“It’s also well known as one of only two schools constructed from granite in Victoria.”

Built in 1869, the historic building served as a single-room schoolhouse for the small farming community of Faraday for just over 100 years, before it was closed following the kidnapping. When visited by The Age in 2004, it was operating as a selling point for a local winery.

The current owners have used the property as a private residence for 12 years.

This October will mark 44 years since teacher Mary Gibbs, then aged 20 , was kidnapped with her six pupils, aged between five and 10.

The children were playing musical chairs when plasterers Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland burst into the small school in the afternoon of October 6, 1972, with a sawn-off shotgun.

Eastwood and Boland forced Ms Gibbs and her students into a van, before driving off into remote bushland. The pair left a note at the school threatening to kill the hostages if the ransom was not paid.

Victoria’s then education minister, Lindsay Thompson, was to deliver the ransom in a dramatic early morning exchange at the Woodend Post Office, but the men never turned up.

They did, however, leave Ms Gibbs and the students alone in the van, giving the young teacher enough time to kick out a metal panel at the back of the vehicle with her platform shoe and escape with the children. The men were later arrested after a manhunt in the area.

Despite its infamous history, Mr Romeo said there had been strong interest in the 9200 square-metre property, much of which was coming from Melbourne buyers looking to make a tree change to the wine town just outside Castlemaine.

The school itself is on the Victorian Heritage Register, he said, but such a large block of land presented a buyer with options to build or extend.

“People like the importance and the romance of heritage buildings, ” he said.

As well as the schoolhouse, the property includes two other self-contained cottages. It is being marketed around the mid-$500,000 range.