About us

Introduction

Rosehill Instruments is a specialist brass and woodwind retailer in business for more than fifty years. We stock a wide range of new and pre-owned instruments: student, intermediate and professional. All stock is held on site and is available for testing. We encourage you to contact us before visiting to allow us to pick and prepare instruments prior to your arrival, thereby making best use of your time. Our showroom opens weekdays from 9:30AM to 5:00PM, Saturdays from 10:00AM to 4:00PM. Instrument repairs and servicing are also available. Our technicians can help with any job from minor adjustments to full restorations.

Our showroom is to the rear of the shop front at 64 London End, Beaconsfield, offering off-the-street parking, and ample space to view and test our varied range of stock. Our workshop is also on site, so minor repairs can often be completed while you wait.

Customers visit us from all around the UK, and increasingly from overseas. We also maintain close links with many military, brass and Salvation Army bands at home and abroad, and since 1999 have been an approved supplier of musical instruments to His Majesty's military bands.

What's in a name?

Rosehill Instruments was founded in 1967 by Trevor Austin, a former musician in the Horse Guards, whose service included playing euphonium on horseback at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. From small beginnings, supplying instruments to friends and acquaintances, a full-time business gradually developed. Rosehill Instruments is now managed by Trevor's son, Paul.

The business was named after the Rosehill Band, a one-time staff band formed in 1939 by employees of the Salvation Army Assurance Society, following their evacuation from central London to a mansion named Rosehill House in Caversham.

The band progressed rapidly, and within six months auditioned successfully for the BBC, providing war-time inspiration through its broadcasts on the Home Service and Light Programme. Many recordings were also made on the Regal Zonophone label. Its founding bandmaster was Walter Ward. He was succeeded in 1942 by Eric Ball, who shortly after handed on the baton to Albert Jakeway. He remained at the helm until the band passed into history after a final engagement in May 1951. Our current telephone on-hold music is Jakeway's Rosehill March.

Trevor joined the band in early 1948, by which time the Society had returned to offices in Tottenham Court Road. Other former members include cornet virtuoso Derek Smith (father of Philip Smith, one-time principal trumpet with the New York Phil), who after emigrating to the USA became bandmaster of the Salvation Army New York Staff Band; the late Harold Nash, who was principal trombone at Covent Garden for more than twenty years before his retirement in 1997; the late James Williams MBE, cornet soloist and long-serving bandmaster of the Enfield Citadel Band; and Sir Gordon Jewkes, the career diplomatist who was governor of the Falkland Islands between 1985 and 1988.

Trevor Austin remembers:

“We formed Rosehill Instruments in 1967, running the business from home to begin with. As it grew, the house filled up. I remember one Christmas I promised to release the dining table which was covered in instruments. I had to fetch my mother-in-law from Medmenham for a one o'clock lunch, but didn't clear the table until just before I left. Our house was tidy, but I left a lot of lines of dust in between where the instrument cases had been standing.

“I ran the business from the garage, and remember selling a trumpet to a man and his son. The father took the trumpet to drop it into a plastic bag before putting it into the case. But it wasn't a bag—just a sleeve—and the trumpet fell right through onto the concrete floor, with a predictable result.

“I received calls from early morning until late at night. I remember selling brass instruments at eight o'clock in the morning, and a cello at nine thirty in the evening in my pyjamas. A bulk order of instruments, delivered by overnight pantechnicon from Romania, arrived at 5am. The driver parked between me and the house next-door, and left his engine running for three hours, until he felt he could knock. My neighbour Bob Baile chanced to be town mayor, and came round for a little chat about running commercial activities from a residential property.

“I was learning lessons all the time; one was to not give a customer too much choice. An example was the chairman of Abingdon Band who came to buy a G trombone, an instrument that was going out of fashion at the time. I had thirty-two of them. So one Saturday afternoon, I laid out all thirty-two in four lines of eight. He went carefully down each line, and played every one. When he reached the end, he came to see me and said he had forgotten which was the one he preferred. Neither of us knew whether to laugh or cry. Anyhow, since that day I never gave a customer more than three instruments at a time.