School pupils may have been spied on by a paedophile convicted of possessing indecent images of children, a Court heard.

Peter Leyland, 37, whose bedroom overlooks the playground at Bingley's St Joseph's RC Primary School, pleaded guilty to possessing the images - stored on a pair of identical CD Roms - when he appeared before magistrates yesterday afternoon.

Magistrates heard that a Customs and Excise officer who raided Leyland's home in Brunswick Street discovered that curtains in an upstairs bedroom had been taped to the wall, stapled together and had what appeared to be slits cut into them.

Julian Briggs, prosecuting, said: "The Crown says that at least gives rise to the possibility that it was to enable him to watch activity in the school playground."

The offence carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison.

Mr Briggs told Bingley Magistrates Court that Customs officer Timothy Marshall had been involved in a search of Leyland's home on December 11 last year.

He said the two unlabelled CDs had been found on the top shelf of a wardrobe in the upstairs bedroom, adding that they had later been viewed on a computer by a Customs computer specialist.

Mr Briggs said: "He found many of the files to be of a paedophilic nature."

He added that the files contained images of a sexually deviant nature, "a proportion of which involved children".

He said there was a substantial quantity of images of an "unpleasant nature".

Mr Briggs said: "When Customs and Excise attended Mr Leyland's premises they found that the bedroom window overlooked a school playground. The curtains had been taped to the wall and stapled together and what appeared to be slits cut into them."

Kam Dhesi, defending, said: "When the curtain element was put to him he said: 'yes the curtains were sealed but that was because the room was cold and very draughty' and he denied there were any slits there. There were no deliberate slits cut into the curtains.

"This element in itself does not assist the court in determining what should be imposed for the possession."

Mr Dhesi said much of his client's computer equipment had been purchased at computer fairs but he did not know what was on the CD Roms.

He said: "Peter Leyland is a man of good character who works and lives by himself and now finds himself before the court for the first time."

Magistrates said they did not "want to pursue the aspect of the curtains" and adjourned the case for three weeks to enable pre-sentence reports to be compiled.

They said they wanted the reports to be prepared "on the basis that all sentence options are left open".

Leyland was remanded on unconditional bail until Friday, August 11.