94 Do You Know the Piano's On My Foot?

Dave Goble

Jul 7, 20202 min read

Updated: Mar 1, 2024

By Heidi Harrington (RIP Terry Jones)

Brentford Musical Museum tells the changing story of how people have captured and listened to music over the last four centuries. From tiny music boxes to the mighty Wurlitzer theatre organ that, like all the best organs, rises from beneath the stage in the concert hall. The collection also includes an extensive array of instruments and inventions, including reproducing pianos, orchestrions, self-playing violins, pipe organs, gramophones and synthesizers. It is also home to one of the world's largest collections of historic musical rolls.

The instruments and exhibits are arranged in three main galleries; not forgetting the aforementioned concert hall which doubles as a cinema and seats up to 230 people.

Returning to the mighty organ for a moment, Wurlitzer Company records show it was shipped to, and installed in, the Regal Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames in 1931 where, in Reginald Foort’s capable hands, it became one of the main attractions of the programme, and the BBC soon began broadcasting from the theatre. In 1972, forty years after its arrival at Kingston, the organ was moved to the Music Museum, then housed in St. George’s Church on Brentford High Street, where it became the largest exhibit.

The Mighty Wurlitzer (organist fully clothed)

The museum was founded in 1963 by Frank Holland MBE (1910–1989) as The British Piano Museum. He believed that self-playing musical instruments should be preserved and, er, "played". In 1975 he was interviewed for the TV show 'Going Places', in which he reminisced about reading an article that described approximately eight hundred abandoned churches in Britain. He decided to look for one that might be suitable to house the instruments and, as mentioned earlier, found St. George’s in Brentford. He later wrote of his experiences in the book 'A Boxful of Rolls'.

In 2006 the museum moved a hundred yards up the road to new purpose-built premises where the organ was rebuilt and re-installed in the new concert hall, remaining as popular as ever.

Tours inform visitors how music was recorded and reproduced, and instruments can be heard in action, including a range of self-playing instruments and music rolls that tell the story of how people listened to music before the days of microphones and electronics.