A pervert was caught with hundreds of thousands of images of child sex abuse downloaded from the internet - the biggest ever collection seized by Kent Police.

Although the total haul was more, Mark Middleton admitted charges involving over 125,000 images.

The 51-year-old father was jailed on Friday for 16 months after a judge spoke of the "breathtaking" quantity of pictures and video clips ranging from levels one to the highest of five.

Maidstone Crown Court heard Kent police raided Middleton's home in November 2005 after discovering he had subscribed to child porn websites.

Officers found extensive computer equipment, including 20 hard drives, floppy discs, CDs and DVDs.

Teteh Turkson, prosecuting, said the search took eight hours, during which "several hundreds of thousands" of the images were seized.

"The police say this is the largest seizure they have ever made of this material," said Mr Turkson. "There is no suggestion he distributed it."

The prosecutor added that although Middleton had no previous convictions, the court ought to be concerned it may pass to "active assaults on children".

Judge David Griffith-Jones QC imposed a sexual offences prevention order, including a ban on working with children, no internet access and no unsupervised contact with children.

Middleton, of Redwall Lane, Hunton, Maidstone, admitted eight charges involving making and possessing indecent images of children.

The judge told him: "These offences, I accept, were removed from their original creation but it should not be forgotten that it is those like you, with your depraved appetite, who create the market which, in turn, leads others to create such images, thereby inflicting unimaginable harm and suffering on the children involved."

Middleton was placed on the sex offenders' register for 10 years.

Detective Sergeant Dave Shipley said: "This is one of the largest recoveries of child abuse images by Kent Police. Every image represents a child being subjected to sexual abuse.

"Kent Police will always work hard to bring to justice those offenders that encourage child abuse by creating a market for the images."