Gaiety Music Hall

A performance room of some kind with a platform 30ft by 12ft is reported as existing in 1841. In 1846 the Rodney Inn Concert Rooms opened, probably a rebuild or part rebuild of the earlier room.

In 1857 a new and much larger hall (116ft long) was built without first closing the existing room (it was possibly built around and over the old structure, as was done at the Canterbury Hall in London in 1854). This seems to have been a grand music hall on the lines of the Canterbury/Weston’s halls, with a capacious balcony on three sides but, in this case, with a proscenium and a painted act drop to what was possibly a scenic stage, rather than a concert platform.

In 1886 the hall reopened as the Gaiety after extensive alterations and improvements and was, for a time, run by Charles Barnard, who owned theatres and music halls in north Kent. At this time it had (surprisingly) a temperance bar.

The 1897 rebuild within the brick shell of the old building was on fully theatrical lines with horseshoe tiers, elaborate plasterwork and domed boxes.

In 1920 it reopened as a cinema. In September 1936 part of the gallery fell in after an explosion in the operating box. The new Gaiety opened in 1938. It closed in 1969 and was demolished the following year.