A POPULAR ITV drama set in the grounds of a Sindlesham school attracted millions of viewers on Sunday night.

The second episode in the new series of Endeavour – based on the early career of legendary fictional detective Inspector Morse – was largely filmed at Bearwood College.

Lead actor Shaun Evans – who plays Morse as a young Detective Constable – was joined by 15 cast, 60 crew and five security staff and chaperones during a fortnight of filming for the two-hour show.

Location manager Alex Cox and producer Camille Gattin spent time speaking to A-level film studies students while they were on site.

Marketing officer Emma Randall, from Bearwood College, said: “Camille was passionate about the importance of networking and making contacts in order to build a successful career, leaving many of our sixth formers inspired about a future in the film and television production industry.” The story was set in July 1966, at the height of World Cup fever. It centred around the grisly murder at an Oxford museum of an elderly gentleman with a specialism in heraldry and genealogy.

Investigations lead Morse to a boarding school, Blythe Mount School for Girls (set at Bearwood College).

Set in the summer holidays with only seven pupils and a skeleton staff remaining in the building, the school has an eerie and abandoned atmosphere. The fictional girls’ school has a gruesome secret buried deep in its past – a series of murders once took place on the Blythe Mount grounds.

As the action moves between 1966 and 1866 Morse’s investigations took a terrifyingly spooky turn towards the supernatural.

Location manager Alex Cox said: “It’s just perfect for this episode. It’s a mirror really with the girls’ school being a house before it was a school, and it’s got that gothic look which we can make really spooky in school where there are only seven pupils left for the summer holidays.

“Sally Russell [events and lettings manager at Bearwood College] and her team have been brilliant accommodating all our requirements and we used so many areas of the school that Bearwood locations featured for at least an hour of the two-hour episode.” The college rooms featured on Sunday evening were the art room, the billiard room as a music room, classroom MF5 as a dormitory, classroom MF3, the humanities corridor, a croquet scene on the Headmaster’s Lawn and the lake.