Francis Frith was one of the most successful commercial photographers from the 1850s and 1860s. He also established what was to become the largest photographic printing business in England. This image is part of the V&A's Francis Frith 'Universal Series' archive which consists of over 4000 whole-plate albumen prints predominantly of historical and topographical sites. Images such as these were highly desirable throughout the 1850s and 1860s.

It is now known that nearly all of the works bearing the F. Frith and Co. stamp were not taken by Frith himself, but by one of his travelling employees. Photographers associated with Frith's 'Universal Series' include Robert Napper (Andalusia), Frank Mason Good (Egypt) and Frederick William Sutton and Hugo Lewis Pearson (Japan). In addition to hiring his own photographers, Frith also bought the negative stocks of established photographers such as Roger Fenton and Francis Bedford.

Frith's growing business coincided with many technological developments taking place within the field of photography. These developments changed and expanded the audience for photography and Frith's operation was well-prepared to provide for it and, it can be argued, worked to develop it employing a diverse range of publishing channels. Targeted towards a market that would later adopt the postcard as the ideal format for its needs, the 'Universal Series' forms a bridge between the initial low volume craft/art production associated with photography of the 1850s and the more commercial mass production work of the latter half of the century.

The High Court was designed by Walter Long Bozzi Granville (1819-1874). Although Granville spent only 12 years in India, he left a distinguished legacy of buildings in Calcutta. He went out in 1858 to become architect to the East Bengal Railway but in 1863 was appointed Consulting Architect to the Government of India. Apart from his campus for the University of Calcutta (demolished 1961), all his works survive. His Gothic Revival High Court (completed 1872) was modeled loosely on Sir George Gilbert Scott’s project for the Hamburg Rathaus of 1854, itself derived from the 13th century Cloth Hall at Ypres in Belgium. Because of problems with subsidence, the tower was never built to the original proposed height.