Mary Hignett
Mary Hignett (31 March 1916 – 16 July 1980) was a British actress best known for her role as Mrs Edna Hall in the television series All Creatures Great and Small.
In All Creatures, she played the role of the cook and housekeeper in the first three series, which ran from 1978 to 1980. Other credits include the Hammer film Prehistoric Women (1967), the horror movie The Corpse (1971), and the 1972 Hammer Horror film Demons of the Mind (in which fellow All Creatures actor Robert Hardy played the role of Zorn).
Hignett was married to the actor Michael Brennan, who survived her. She died shortly after the third series of All Creatures was filmed, her final scene being the seeing off to war of James Herriot (Christopher Timothy). Scheduled to have a hip replacement, she was convinced by her doctors to have a riskier double hip replacement rather than the single. This is believed to have led to her death. Robert Hardy, Timothy and Carol Drinkwater attended the funeral. The news of her passing was written into the script of the 1983 Christmas Special, and her honour was toasted by the four remaining central characters.