Rudolph Ackermann, William Henry Pyne, “Fire in London (Albion Mills, Blackfriars Bridge)”, 1808-1810, Colored Etching, Plate 35, Illustration from “Macrocosm of London”, British Library

The “Macrocosm of London”, published in three volumes between 1808 and 1810, was the result of an ongoing collaboration between publisher Rudolph Ackermann; cartoonist and illustrator Thomas Rowlandson; architectural draughtsman Auguste Charles Pugin; engravers John Bluck, Joseph Constantine Stadler, Thomas Sunderland, John Hill and Richard Bankes Harraden; authors William Henry Pyne and William Combe; and anonymous hand-colorists.

This publication “Macrocosm of London” tapped into the demand for highly-colored prints of real-life subjects that proved something of a publishing sensation during the Regency period in England. Its prints stand as a fascinating historical record of London life in the early years of the 19th century. Auguste Pugin’s fine architectural drawings captured the size and shape of the capital’s principal buildings, both externally and from within. The keenly observed figures drawn by Thomas Rowlandson depicted the vitality and color of both the rich and the poor in late Georgian society.

The Albion flour mill opened at the southern foot of Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1786 and became one of the most visible symbols of Britain’s industrial progress during the late 18th century. Designed in a Neo-Classical style by architect and proprietor James Wyatt, the building contained revolutionary steam engines engineered to the designs of James Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton. 

The sheer power of the engines, which drove twenty pairs of mills stones, promised staggering levels of output in the milling of corn for flour, which was needed for the seemingly endless demand for bread by London’s rapidly growing population. As such, the Albion mill was widely resented by existing millers in London who were still reliant on water or wind power, and who saw the arrival of steam as a death sentence for their trade.

On the 2 March 1791, the Albion mill was totally destroyed by fire, an event that caused much rejoicing in some quarters and some rumors of arson. Though poor maintenance was probably to blame, the burning of the mill was nevertheless the cause of a popular sensation in London which drew crowds of onlookers to the site for weeks afterwards. 

The catastrophe of the mill burning also stood as a useful literary metaphor for the potential harm caused by industrial progress. Most famously it is thought that poet William Blake was inspired by the burnt-shell of the building to portray his vision of ‘dark satanic mills’, contained in the preface poem “And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times” for his 1804 epic work “Milton: A Poem in Two Books”.