Visitors alighting from trains pulling in at Batley gain a vivid impression of the Yorkshire town even before they leave its station.

A sprawling, colourful mural in its underpass depicts the area’s most celebrated buildings and locations: the headquarters of Fox’s Biscuits and Johnstone’s Paints vie for wall space with the Batley Bulldogs rugby league team; a union jack flutters from the town hall next to the war memorial. At one end of the mural is a church, at the other a mosque.

The painting tells of a once thriving mill town that has borne witness to great social change, but still retains a Victorian sense of civic pride in its local institutions and local heroes.

Jo Cox was always destined to become one of those heroes.

“Jo was the year above me at school,” said Kate Stephens, chief executive of the charity Smart Works, which helps women on low incomes find employment. “She was a trailblazer for all of us at the grammar school, someone who touched our lives in an important way.

“She made it feel possible that you could achieve incredible things, win a place at Cambridge from the most unassuming background, whilst being kind, fun and down to earth, and never losing a sense of perspective.”

For Stephens, Cox was exactly the “kind of person we need to be an MP”. “Her integrity, her genuine belief in making a difference and her lack of pretension are an inspiration,” she said.

An inspiration that locals hope even her death will not destroy. Nestling among the flowers laid under the statue of Joseph Priestley, theologian and scientist, near to where Cox was attacked outside Birstall library, one handwritten card spoke for many: “May your courage and bravery live on.”

It was a sentiment repeated by Cox’s family who visited the scene yesterday afternoon as local people looked on.

Gordon and Jean Leadbeater and their youngest daughter Kim said Cox would “live on through all the good people in the world”.

Speaking on behalf of the family, Kim described the tributes paid to her sister as “unbelievable”. “We all appreciate this massively. It is amazing. Proper Yorkshire people. Absolutely beautiful,” she told the gathered crowd who were quick to offer applause.

“Our parents instilled in us a real glass half full mentality, and while I sometimes tend to add a large measure of Yorkshire cynicism into this, Jo generally did not. She always saw the good. We know there are some evil people in this world, but there are an awful lot of good people, too.”

Everyone, it seemed, knew Jo Cox and loved or admired her. Every taxi driver, shop owner, religious leader, teacher, pupil, local councillor has an affectionate Jo Cox story. Almost all remarked on her kindness, her passion and her energy.

On Friday afternoon, four-year-old Zac Leadbetter was waiting with his father, Michael, 25, at a bus stop in Batley, not far from the grammar school where Cox was educated. Michael said that the MP paid a visit to his son’s school, Batley Parish, just two weeks earlier. Zac clutched a letter that carried a picture of Cox addressing the pupils.

The school motto, “Together We are One”, had never felt more appropriate, the headmaster explained before signing off with Emily Dickinson’s stirring poem, If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking, which begins: “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”

Many of those who came to Priestley’s statue to pay tribute to the MP last Friday were not from her constituency. A man who asked to give just his first name, Mike, had come with his wife from Wakefield. “She wasn’t the usual career politician,” he said. “She believed in herself and she believed in people.”

Mike hoped that Cox’s death would “give a boost to socialism” and the Remain campaign of which she was a passionate supporter and which, judging by the number of Leave posters in people’s windows, is in a minority.

Many people are clearly impervious to the referendum campaign. Locals preferred to remember the Jo Cox they knew. If anything, the death of the 41-year-old mother of two had caused them to focus on the important things in their own lives.

Michael Leadbetter, who works nights at Tesco, had not given Thursday’s vote much thought. “I’m going to go for whichever side will be best for families. I’ll do what I did at the last election and talk to my parents about which way to vote,” he said.