Evelyn Rothwell’s father was a tea dealer in the City of London. Her mother was related to Charles Reade, a 19th century novelist. She started to learn the oboe at her school, Downe House, near Newbury. Her father did not want her to study music, but in the end she was allowed to go to the Royal College of Music. She studied the oboe there, and the piano as a second instrument. She also played the cello and timpani. She was a student there at the same time as Benjamin Britten, who sometimes asked her to play some of the oboe music he had just written.