William Blake’s first original work of art, which he produced in 1773 at the age of 17, was a drawing entitled Joseph Of Arimathea Among The Rocks Of Albion. Joseph was the wealthy follower of Christ, named in all four gospels, who provided the tomb for his burial. Like other prominently named individuals in the gospels, such as Mary Magdalene, he became the focus of many later legends.

The story that Joseph visited Albion (the poetical name for Britain) was first told by a Glastonbury monk, William of Malmesbury, who wrote in 1137 that his church had been built shortly after the crucifixion by disciples of Christ. Although he did not name the disciples, an expanded edition of his history, written in 1247, claimed that their leader was Joseph of Arimathea.

Blake saw Joseph of Arimathea as the builder of the first church in Britain, and the ideal figure of the Christian artist. Beside his drawing, which he later engraved, he wrote, "This is one of the Gothic artists who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages."

Over time, many details were added to the legend of Joseph of Arimathea's coming to Britain. Cornwall was known to have ancient links with the Mediterranean through Phoenician traders, who came to buy tin. To explain why Joseph might have come to Glastonbury, and how he earned his wealth, the idea developed that he was a tin merchant who had visited Britain even before Christs crucifixion.

"Joseph was a tin merchant, a tin merchant, a tin merchant. Joseph was a tin merchant and the miners loved him well."

Christ in Britain?

The next stage in the development of the legend was the idea that Joseph of Arimathea was Christ's great-uncle, which would explain why he had been willing to provide his tomb. This may have led to the notion that, as a child, Christ himself had accompanied Joseph to Britain on one of his tin trading expeditions. In the 19th century, the people of Priddy, a tin mining village just north of Glastonbury, had a saying, "As sure as our Lord was in Priddy."

There is also the story of Victorian metalworkers who cast the pipes for church organs. As they poured the molten metal, they would say for luck, "Joseph was in the tin trade." Asked to explain the custom, one foreman explained, "We workers in metal are a very old fraternity, and like other handicrafts we have our traditions amongst us. One of these... is that Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man of the Gospels, made his money in the tin trade with Cornwall. We have also a story that he made voyages to Cornwall in his own ships, and that on one occasion he brought with him the Child Christ and His Mother and landed them at St Michael's Mount."

Quoted by Rev Lionel Smithett Lewis, St Joseph Of Arimathea At Glastonbury, 1953

Was Jerusalem "builded" here?

"The nature of my work is visionary and imaginative it is an Endeavour to restore what the Ancients call'd the Golden Age."   Blake, A Vision Of The Last Judgement, 1810

William Blake was not only thinking of a possible visit of Christ to Britain when he wrote Jerusalem. In the late-1790s, he came to the conclusion that Britain was the original Holy Land, and that it was from the British Druids that all other religions derived.

In Milton, just two pages after the Jerusalem poem, he placed an illustration of Stonehenge, which he believed to be a Druid temple. Above the picture, he wrote, "Lambeth's Vale where Jerusalem's foundations began, where they were laid in ruins....Thence stony Druid Temples overspread the island white, and thence...through the whole Earth were rear'd."

So Jerusalem, in the sense of the land of the lost "Golden Age", really was once "builded here", beneath Blake's own London. It was from his home in Lambeth Vale that he believed that the Golden Age could be renewed. When a friend came upon Blake and his wife, Catherine, reading Paradise Lost naked in their garden at 13 Hercules Buildings, Blake said, "It's only Adam and Eve you know."

"The fields from Islington to Marybone (sic)
To Primrose Hill and Saint Johns Wood:
Were builded over with pillars of gold,
And there Jerusalem's pillars stood."

Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 27

Dark Satanic Mills

In Blake's poem, the bright Jerusalem has vanished, to be replaced by "dark satanic mills." In Milton, Satan is described as the "Miller of Eternity", whose mills represent the reductive intellect, grinding down and destroying the imagination. Blake may also have been thinking of the enslaved and blinded Samson, in Milton's Samson Agonistes, "eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves".

Another possible source for Blake's image is the first great factory in London - the Albion Flour Mills on the south bank of the Thames, by Blackfriars Bridge, built in 1769 by Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Powered by steam engines, it could produce 6,000 bushels of flour a week, and had the potential to drive most of London’s traditional small-scale millers out of business.

In March 1791, the factory burned down, perhaps by arson. The London millers, who had most to gain by the fire, celebrated with a joyful demonstration on Blackfriars Bridge. One of the placards they held declared, "Success to the mills of ALBION but no Albion Mills."

The ruined factory remained a blackened shell until it was pulled down in 1809. It was a familiar sight to William Blake, who lived just down the road in Lambeth, and who passed it every time he walked into the city. The name "Albion", which Blake in his poetry gave to a giant personifying Britain, must have given the building a powerful resonance for him.

"The banks of the Thames are clouded! the ancient porches of Albion are Darken'd."

 Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 5, 1-2