A 58-year-old man who downloaded 20,000 indecent images of children was caught after a house clearance worker he employed found printouts of some of them.

Peter Ellis, of Rowan Crescent, Felixstowe, pleaded guilty to three charges of making indecent images of a child when he appeared before South East Suffolk Magistrates Court.

Nearly 1,800 of the images were categorised as Level A, the most serious grading for child pornography.

All the charges related to the period December 31, 2001 to September 26, 2014.

The first offence contained 17,921 images and movies, the second 1,404 images and movies, while the third involved 783 images printed on A4 paper.

Ellis will now be sentenced next month after his case was committed to Ipswich Crown Court.

Prosecutor Colette Harper said the matter was “clearly not suitable” to be dealt with by magistrates due to the large number of Category A images. Mrs Harper also said the charges were specimen charges only.

The court heard a house clearance team had been contracted by Ellis to clear items from his house.

While a member of staff was working in the bedroom they found pornographic material and contacted police.

Ellis also had two desk top computers which were taken and searched by officers.

Magistrates were told Ellis denied having any moving images, but accepts that he had still storybook images.

He also denies making images up to September 26 last year.

It was said he had not had broadband or a link to the internet for several years.

He claimed police have said the images they found were not made beyond 2006.

However, Mrs Harper said the basis of his plea was not accepted at this stage.

Ellis is due to be sentenced at Ipswich Crown Court on July 10.

He was released on conditional bail on the basis that he is not to have any unsupervised contact with children.