In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Numbers 22 and 24 Spital Street were adapted to provide premises for Dartford Conservative Club and its associated Working Men’s Club, respectively. The clubs are supposed to have ‘opened’ on 1 October 1884, although there was still work to be in converting the buildings. The Conservative Club would have provided a suite of rooms, of reasonably opulent domestic character, for the use of members; other rooms, perhaps on the first floor, would have been used as offices.
From an early date, very likely from the outset, it was proposed that a large hall be erected for meetings and entertainments, within the two former gardens behind the premises. This would have been shared between the two Clubs, and also used for public meetings and events. On 6 August 1886, Tait & Co completed their designs. The initial intention was that the hall should be aligned end-on to the existing Conservative Club, almost abutting the single-storey wing at its rear. This design was soon revised, however, rotating the hall through ninety degrees, clockwise, to run along the southern boundary of the site, between the adjoining garden walls bounding 20 and 26 Spital Street.
The hall was modelled, loosely, on a medieval open hall, six-bays long, with a raised stage at its eastern end. It was a yellow-brick building, under a steep slate roof. It was only lightly decorated, externally.
On the 18 November 1889, the Conservative Working Men’s Club seems to have moved out to new premises on the High Street. In 1893, designs were prepared to rebuild the Conservative Club across the full width of Numbers 22 and 24.
These were approved on 24 March 1893, and included an ornate new red-brick frontage with a bold portal leading down a broad new iron-roofed entrance passage to the Conservative Hall. There was a small ‘pay office’ on the left-hand side of this passage, as one entered.
From 1919, the former Conservative Hall was converted and enlarged, to re-open in February 1920 as the ‘Gem cinema.
The Conservative Club moved to new premises in June 1934, the lease on its old premises running out in 1939.
On 23 December 1935, Medway Cinemas opened a new cinema, the State, next-door to the Gem. This was a large purpose-built cinema, with a Compton organ, seating 1500. The Gem’s days were evidently numbered; it had closed by 8 September 1943 when it and the Constitutional Club were auctioned off.
The former Conservative Hall seems, for a time, to have been used for the ‘research, development and assembly of electronic equipment’; the Club was demolished in 1960

<1> Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 2013, The Conservative Hall, subsequently the Gem Cinema, Spital Street, Dartford, Historic building record (Unpublished document). SKE31501.