A 72-year-old Dursley man who is alleged to have had almost two million indecent images of children stored on his computers has denied 17 charges at Gloucester crown court.

David Jackson of Woodmancote, Dursley, pleaded not guilty to making indecent of photographs of children between November 3, 2009 and May 9, 2018 in all three cateories of severity - A, B and C - on a variety of computers found at his home address.

The charges refer to 587 Category A images; 1,794 Category B images and 1,856,704 Category C images - making a grand total of 1,856,704 images across six computers.

Prosecutor Charley Pattison said that Jackson claims the images came into his devices while he was downloading legitimate material.

However, she told the court, "the images have been categorised in the form of a library system."

Matthew Harbinson, defending, said: "Mr Jackson says he did not enter anything into an internet search engine to download these images.

"I've no idea of how masked downloads work in relation to people coming into possession of illegal material like this.

"Therefore a forensic examination is needed by a computer expert to examine the files and analyse the results."

Judge Michael Cullum agreed and said that it was obvious that more information was needed for the jury. He gave the prosecution more time to have the computers examined by experts.

The judge vacated the planned trial on January 7, 2020 and bailed Jackson until a further progress hearing on January 23.

The date for trial will be set at that hearing, he said.