A former headteacher who lives in Elmdon has today admitted making thousands of indecent images of children.

Miraz Triggs made 33 indecent images and nine movies of the most serious category between October 2016 and June this year.

The 46-year-old made more than 21,000 indecent photographs and dozens of movies of a lower category.

Triggs, of Ickleton Road in Elmdon near Saffron Walden, also admitted distributing eight of the images and possessing extreme pornography involving an animal during a hearing at Colchester Magistrates’ Court this morning.

Magistrates said the case was too serious for them to hear and declined jurisdiction.

Triggs will be sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on Tuesday, January 16.

He was released on bail, with the condition he have no unsupervised custody, control or contact with any children under the age of 16.

Triggs was a science teacher at Barnwell School in Stevenage, Herts, until summer 2017, and was previously head of the Da Vinci Studio School of Science and Engineering – also in the town.

Prior to his latest stint at Barnwell, he had been assistant head there during a previous spell there from 2003 to 2012, and was briefly head of St Albans’ Batchwood School after being appointed in 2016.

In a letter to Barnwell parents when the allegations became public, the school gave reassurances that the images were taken from the internet as opposed to any direct physical contact with children, and that there was no evidence Triggs had personally taken photographs.