Dr Stevens worked at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital

Dr Richard Stevens, 54, of Sale, Greater Manchester, disappeared after arriving for work in July 2003.

The consultant paediatrician's body was found in a disused slate mine in the Lake District nearly six months later.

The bundle of love notes, letters and cards were found in a hut in the Lake District on Tuesday by a young couple and were handed in to police.

Dr Stevens left his jacket on his chair and vanished from the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital in Pendlebury, where he had worked for 20 years, on 21 July last year.

A national hunt was launched and there were several reported sightings of the doctor.

'Under pressure'

But his body was found in January this year in a walk-in mineshaft 1,500ft up the Old Man of Coniston, a remote mountain in Cumbria.

The letters reportedly trace the course of the affair between him and a woman who has never been identified.

They are being passed on to Greater Manchester Police.

At the doctor's inquest on 29 July, it emerged that the affair apparently led to his death.

He had been under pressure to tell his wife about the two-and-a-half year affair, the hearing was told.

The inquest was told Dr Stevens killed himself by injecting a combination of two drugs - Propofol, a hypnotic sedative and Atracurium, which acts as a muscle relaxant.