AN ARCHITECT whose work featured on Channel 4’s Grand Designs has been jailed for possessing thousands of pictures of child pornography.

Self-employed David Williams, 65, of Sunderland Avenue, Oxford, would spend hours at home looking at images of children as young as four, Oxford Crown Court heard on Friday.

Judge Patrick Eccles jailed the grandfather for four months.

Judge Eccles said: "The fact is that you have been found to have over 1,000 images of which 50 were level four and you were looking at these images over a period of two years.

“You are someone who made a deliberate decision.

“You are a mature, intelligent man and you must have known it was illegal.”

Police burst through the paedophile’s front door and seized computers containing 1,037 illegal images on June 14, 2007.

Peter Coombe, prosecuting, said Williams told officers he had only been looking at the pictures out of curiosity.

Mr Coombe added: “He described some neglect or abuse of himself as a child and that he did not consider himself to be a paedophile.”

David Bright, defending, pleaded with the judge not to jail Williams.

He said: “Is immediate imprisonment needed to correct his behaviour?

“In my respectful submission the answer can be given immediately.

“No. He presents no danger to the public.”

However, the judge rejected the plea and sentenced Williams to four months in prison for each of eight counts of making indecent images of children, to run concurrently.

He was ordered to sign on to the Sex Offenders’ Register for seven years and to pay prosecution costs of £474.