A former Corsham man who searched for and downloaded hundreds of indecent images of children has been jailed for a year and eight months.

Peter Bell, 59, used peer to peer software to get the vile pictures and movies of child abuse over a seven year period.

Bell had put terms into his search engines including 'boy love' as he hunted down the material.

Tessa Hingston, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that police got a warrant to raid his home in January.

They confiscated a laptop, external hard drive and memory stick and when they were searched they were found to contain 755 indecent pictures and movies of children.

She said the material, downloaded between September 2007 and January this year, was almost all of children between one and 12-years-old.

And some of the most serious images involved youngsters aged about three years old being raped.

When he was questioned Bell accepted he had been using software to get hold of the material and knew what the search terms he used meant.

"He knew what he was downloading was child abuse images and knew it was illegal," Miss Hingston said.

Bell, who gave the court an address in Southampton, admitted five counts of making and one of possessing indent images of children and one of possessing prohibited images of children.

Andrew Eddy, defending, said since his arrest his client has sought help to ensure he stops looking at the material.

"He has a real insight into his offending. He realises it is not just images he is looking at, they are real people," he said.

He urged the court to impose a suspended sentence to allow his client to take part in a sexual offenders' programme.

Jailing him Judge Tim Mousley QC said: "What makes this offence particularly serious is the nature of the material, the quantity of the material and the significant period in which you were doing this.

"Each one of the children in these images was a victim of your offending. Some of the children were very young, a number of these images were moving images.

"You were deliberately searching for this material and that increases the sentence I must impose on you and there were a large number of victims."

He imposed a 20-month jail term and told him he must register as a sex offender for ten years and abide by a sexual offences prevention order for five years.