During the Victorian period, millennial beliefs (that is, those beliefs pertaining to the imminent fulfilment of Revelations 20:1-10; the Rapture, the millennium etc) became a lot more prominent than they had previously been.

Millennialism is, of course, a key part of Christian heritage. Most believers, have, throughout history, looked forward to the return of Christ. Most interpretations have historically considered Biblical prophecies as fulfilled, and Revelations as a recount of past events. This specific strain, however, has its roots in the Reformation, and the teachings of some Anabaptist 'prophets' such as Melchior Hoffman in Muenster. Via English Puritanism, it found its way to the colonies, gaining particular purchase in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a Puritan project, administred by Puritan preachers such as the father and son Increase and Cotton Mather. However, the series of revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century reshaped the political arrangements in both the US and the UK and changed the religious discourse in national life, removing Puritan concerns (and thus millennialism) from the forefront. That's not to say they disappeared completely; the French Revolution and the Act of Union were heralded as God's judgement on the excesses of the European aristocracy, and a sign of the imminent Armageddon in County Armagh, respectively, by some particularly fervent observers, and dramatic prophetic characters such as Joanna Southcott were fairly well known. Nevertheless, while these currents were bubbling away in the background, millennialism was mostly a fringe concern.

In the UK, one of the major driving forces behind the reemergence of millennialism was the work of John Nelson Darby. Darby was a Church of Ireland (that is, Anglican) minister; English, but educated at Trinity College Dublin. Derby formed a study group in Dublin in 1827, which was particularly concerned with some of the same values as the Puritans; a Godly community, Biblical literalism, and sola scriptura, the idea that the Bible is the final/only authority on matters of faith and worship. The group participated in a series of conferences on prophecy at the Powerscourt Estate in County Wicklow, held anually between 1831 and 1833. Lady Powerscourt had been intrigued by prophetic works in the 1820s, and was very interested in unfulfilled prophecy in the Bible, which led naturally to an interest in millennialism. Lady Powerscourt's inspiration for her conferences were the Albury conferences, held during 1826-30 at the estate of Henry Drummond, in Surrey. Drummond, along with the Scottish theologian and former Presbyterian Edward Irving, were extremely interested in millennial beliefs, and went on to found the Catholic Apostolic Church (also known as the Irvingites).

Darby's main achievement was to pull together the disparate threads of millennial thought and present them as a cohesive whole. Influenced by those premillennial trends bubbling away in the background, new millennial interpretations such as that of William de Burgh, another Church of Ireland minister, and discussions among his group and the Powerscourt conferences, Darby began formulating his own eschatological beliefs.

His group began preaching and evangelising in England, starting from a base in Plymouth in 1831 (hence their current name, the Plymouth Brethern), and energised by these efforts, Darby began moving around the country. He was brought up to Oxford by one of his colleagues from Dublin, F W Newman, and met a Plymouth native, Benjamin Wills Newtown, who part of a millennial group there. This group had sent a deputy to Scotland to observe the outbreaking of tongues and healings at Irving's church there (they thought these might be a sign of the coming millennium), and were disillusioned with the Anglican establishment, so they eventually joined Darby in Plymouth, and the group as a whole went on to dominate the Powerscourt conferences in subsequent years. It's important to note that while there was an upsurge in millennial belief at this time, converts only numbered in the hundreds by 1830.

Darby spent the next decade refining his theology, with the 'big idea', so to speak, being dispensationalism, the idea that God has made several covenants (dispensations) with man throughout time, and that certain of God's promises are yet to be fulfilled, and when they are (at the time of the Rapture, which can be any time) will herald the coming of the millenium. He crystalised these ideas during several years in Switzerland, including a lecture series in Luasanne, where he built a systematic theology around these ideas and that of the coming millennium. This became the basis for the theology in the Scofield Reference Bible at the turn of the twentieth century, which is why millennial ideas are so prevalent in American fundamentalism.

Darby's ideas caused a deal of controversy. The traditional historicist school of millennial thinking produced a series of works debating and attempting to refute Darby's position. There was an increase in literature around millennial themes, and, tellingly, a lot of antimillennial literature too, throughout the 1840s and 50s. Millennial thinking, whether one agreed with it or not, became an important consideration in religious and intellectual life, although as a theological principle it was mostly limited to the evangelical wing of the established churches. Ultimately, millennial ideas were discussed a great deal, but they were not held by a majority of believers (at least, the Darbyite type weren't), even if they were becoming more popular and more prominent. There was no British equivalent to the Millerite movement in upstate New York; no mass millennial doomsday cult, and the closest thing was probably the outbreak of tongues and healing at the Irvingite church in 1830.

If you're interested in the subject you'll find lots on the religious side. I recommend:

From Awakening to Secession: Radical Evangelicals in Switzerland and Britain, 1815-35 by Timothy Stunt

Evangelical Millennialism in the Trans-Atlantic World 1500-1800 by Crawford Gribben

The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millernarianism 1800-1930 by Ernest Sandeen (a bit dated now, but a classic)

There's also a really good collection of essays edited by Gribben and Stunt, called Prisoners of Hope?: Aspects of Evangelical Millennialism in Britain and Ireland, 1800 - 1880

If you're into Doomsday cults etc. and they need not be necessarily religious, I highly recommend the work by Richard Landes, Heaven on Earth: the Varities of the Millennial Experience, which looks at secular apocalyptic thinking.