Property: Old college ties still bind: The men at the top of the property world have a special and strong bond, says Anne Spackman

English gentlemen traditionally conducted their business on the basis that their word was their bond. There are few places where the old etiquette survives, but one of them is at the top of the property world in the offices of firms such as Knight Frank & Rutley, Strutt & Parker and John D Wood.

It used to be the old school or regimental tie that bound the establishment together. In business and the City that has come apart at the seams. In the property world, there are still such bonds, but there is an additional, unique one that shapes the ethos of this small, insular business: the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester.

Is this Cirencester college, the one with a reputation for boisterous parties and heavy drinking, you may ask? It is indeed. Its alumni of just one year - 1970 - includes Christopher Cornell, the managing partner of Knight Frank & Rutley; Peter Caroe, head of KFR's farm agency; Peter Loundes, the chairman of Lane Fox; and James Laing and Anthony Cane, the joint heads of the national agency department of Strutt & Parker. About one third of those selling houses, land and farms for such agencies went to Cirencester.

College is often a powerful, shared experience, but Cirencester seems to have been special. According to James Laing, 'Cirencester is much smaller than most colleges. There were just 100 of us in our year. There were lots of kindred spirits with similar views.'

What were those views? Andrew Fleming, head of Hamptons' agriculture and land division, who was at Cirencester from 1977 to 1980, sums it up: 'We all wanted to earn money, but we all like to enjoy life as well.'

James Laing points out that all the students were setting off on a similar path: 'Unlike university, where my son now is, it is a practical, vocational course,' he says. 'We were all looking forward to a particular career.'

Not that careers loomed particularly large in the students' minds at the time. Parties and girls were more important. Nearly all the men at Cirencester had been to boarding school - many, like James Laing, had been at Eton - and the college required them to work for a year before they arrived. So they were slightly older and more worldly than the average 18-year-old undergraduate.

That intake was the first that required A- levels. Christopher Cornell was an exception. He spent 10 years in the Army before going to Cirencester. 'There were endless parties,' he recalls. 'I got married at the end of my first term, but the bachelors went for their lives.'

There was also a common moral bond that still holds these men together. They are serious business rivals and although it would be easy to mock this as a form of upper-class back-scratching, theirs is a genuine trust that has survived the ravages of the recession.

And it has been very tough, as they say, at the top, where these firms compete. Nowhere have prices fallen further or business disappeared so fast. Andrew Fleming, like all the old boys, feels the men he went to college with would never break their word, however grim the circumstances. 'If you are looking to do a deal, you know there is a bond,' he says.

'Mutual trust is worth a lot,' says Anthony Cane, of Strutt Parker. 'It's a bit like it was in the old stock market. I know self-regulation's a dirty word, but it does work.'

Simon de Boinville, director of John D Wood's country department, was at Cirencester from 1974-77. He too, recognises the 'special relationship', but wonders how long it will survive. 'I would trust the people I was with at college. We are a small profession. But our way of business is under pressure.'

Andrew Fleming was at Cirencester in 1978, the year that saw the first intake of girls - 'all three of them'. Had that changed things? 'There was some wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was a very male-dominated place,' he says. 'We always thought we worked a lot harder than our predecessors, but we didn't have to work anything like as hard as they do now. With the girls there, they are under much more pressure.'

Girls make up a third of the students at Cirencester now - part of the college's metamorphosis from a finishing school for gentlemen to a professional academic environment. Students now study for a degree in rural land management. The first 'first' went to a girl, Sharon Taylor, who works as an estate manager for Smith Woolley in Woodstock.

Jane Keay, the college's schools liaison officer, says that Cirencester still takes 60 per cent of its students from independent schools, but that 25 years ago the figure was nearer 90 per cent, with the rest coming from the Army. 'The social mix is greater now,' she says. 'We're not a country club. We get students from city comprehensive schools.

''There is a new generation of youngsters who were brought up in the countryside, and have seen their fathers commute to the city every day. They have decided they would rather stay in the country.' Entry now depends on getting 12 points at A-level - the equivalent of two C or 3 D grades. But personality still counts and the interview is seen as equally important for securing entry.

Once you get to Cirencester, you have to work hard to stay. Rupert Sweeting, a partner in the country house department of Knight Frank & Rutley, was in the first graduate intake in 1984. 'There were 24 of us to start with, five of them girls. Only 16 actually finished,' he says.

'My father went to Cirencester and the attitude to work then was quite different. In those days many of the students were playboys who didn't really need to work.'

Nor does the old Cirencester network guarantee you a job now. When Peter Loundes, one of the 1970 group, was in his final year at Cirencester he captained the cricket team against an XI led by Edward Lane Fox. 'I wrote to thank him afterwards and mentioned I was looking for job.' Peter Loundes is now chairman of Lane Fox. But it does not work like that any more. In 1991 and 1992, students were lucky to find a job anywhere and this year it was still very tough. In a normal year, Knight Frank & Rutley take on two or three graduates of Cirencester. 'It is our principal source of graduates on the rural side,' Christopher Cornell says, 'but we look equally hard elsewhere - at Reading and Cambridge universities and the other agricultural colleges.'

Rupert Sweeting adds: 'It's too tough a business to be able to get jobs through who you know. You might give people advice about jobs coming up and that sort of thing, but it's all merit now.'

The old establishment was often ridiculed for its long lunches and long weekends. These have disappeared in the property business, driven out by the recession. They may find it harder to make money these days, but enjoying life still counts. The men who fought over the girls now fight over the houses. As James Laing of Strutt & Parker jokes. 'Some of us were better at winning the girls.'

(Photograph omitted)