Jo Weir came back to live in Covent Garden after suffering from a sense of isolation she felt in rural areas

SHE was an institution of Covent Garden who dedicated her life to its people, its history, and above all its community, where she saw so much that needed fighting for and couldn’t help but get involved.

Jo Weir, who died in November, has left behind a legacy of change achieved by her unwaver­ing determination and compassion throughout her remarkable life.

Her son Crispin Weir said: “She had this duality within her, an ability to be so kind and always caring, but then hard as nails. She was always tough, dealing with lots of adversity, but also so gentle and soft. A very unusual dynamic to have.”

Ms Weir was born in 1939 in Guildford 25 days after the start of the Second World War.

Living between Essex and the East End in London, her earliest memories were shaped by war. Then, after her mother became ill with cancer and passed away in 1954, Ms Weir quickly found herself becoming a surrogate mother to her two sisters, Vicky and Ginny.

Ms Weir was deeply artistic, but it was around this time she had to give up her place at the Cambridge School of Art and drop this dream due to lack of financial support.

But always pragmatic, she decided to join the Women’s Royal Navy Service and quickly ascended through its ranks

Mr Weir said: “She just got on with it. She once told me a story that she was doing some gardening and she put a fork straight through her wellington boot.

“But instead of crying out in pain, she just pulled it out and walked home, covered in blood, because she didn’t want the others to know what had happened or think she was weak.”

Ms Weir moved to London in the early 1960s, frequenting Soho’s bohemian haunts and often ending up in Covent Garden in the morning for breakfast and coffee before heading home.

Mr Weir said: “She was going to all these places like the 2i’s and Le Macabre bar, all those
sort of classic 60s institutions. I think there was a feeling for a time for a change.

“She said to me: ‘They used to dress us just like our mothers, having to wear twin sets and pearls. We can’t go like this’. So she said there was this feeling of liberation, not only sexual liberation but of the kind of limitations that were placed on women.”

He added: “She was defiant. She once told me her first husband parked his car across the driveway to prevent her from voting Labour because he didn’t approve of who she was.

“So, she walked all the way to the polling station which was about 20 miles away.”

In Ms Weir’s later life, after battles with rural isolation and a period of being homeless, she and her son Crispin found themselves returning to Covent Garden and settling down.

It was here she found a calling, a need to help its people, protect its history and, above all else, its community.

Having joined the Covent Garden Community Association in 1987, she became its chair in 1990, a position she held for the next 34 years.

Mr Weir said: “From her point of view a community-based idea was something she really loved because she thought that’s how you build positive areas.

“She just hated injustice and had such an intolerance for it. She hated seeing something that was really unfair. When one of our neighbours was getting thrown out, and they’d lived there for 30 years, she stepped in and said ‘I’m not having this’, and she went in and she saved them.”

He added: “She worked really hard in the campaign to stop the GLC from demolishing the area and redeveloping it and she fought absolutely tenaciously to protect original buildings, architecture and to get more housing.”

Her artistic flare never really went away and she had her own stall in the Apple Market in Covent Garden for many years selling her watercolours and original prints.

Mr Weir said: “She was unbelievable. I never knew how she found the time among all the other things. She was so unbelievably caring.

“She was an amazing watercolourist, I think she inherited from both her parents the abilities.

“She also loved having a glass of red wine. It is very difficult living here without her, because it’s like this huge void, which is just unfillable.

Mr Weir added: “She was a joy to be around, always very funny, making you laugh all the time.

“She was also so highly creative. She’d do things like, come back from work, or in the old days, from school, and she’d have just painted one of the rooms just because she was bored of the colour, or rearrange the room’s furniture to make a change.

“She was so selfless. She never cared about herself, she just cared about everyone else.”