Businesses in Tavistock are getting into the royal spirit ahead of the Coronation this weekend.

Union Jacks and bunting are adorning several shop windows as a celebratory atmosphere builds up before King Charles III is crowned.

Coronation fever as certainly hit the team at Soft Touch on the outer Pannier Market where a mannequin has been dressed in a swathe of patriotic fabric, while the King looks down imperiously from a framed photo on the wall and a red white and blue wreath decorates the entrance to the fabric shop.

Owner Patsy Fisher credits the support of her royalist staff for the royal theme. They are Lesley Walker, Carol Shaw, Eleanor Fisher, Zara Emony, Caroline Davies ad Judy Barlow.

The shop sells sewing machines, wool, fabric and craft packs to the seamstresses of the area. Patsy’s Union Jack material is selling well, as are the bunting craft packs, to encourage peoplke to be creative and make their own decorations, rather than buy them ready-made.

She said: ‘The team have joined in the Coronation enthusiasticallyand have been working on it since Easter because we are open all the Coronation weekend.

‘We all like the Royal Family and are loking forward to the Coronation. We’ve got some jolly Union Jack fabric and a wreath, an old sewing machine with the fabric and a dressmaker’s model and a photo of the King.

‘We’re trying to show people how easily they can make bunting, rather than buying plastic versions, by giving them all the ingredients in a pack to make their own fabric bunting.’

Jan Dean, runs Knitting Korner, selling any colour yarn available, which cover the walls, to her many regular customers. She has decorated her shop window with mini homemade crowns and strung bunting across the the width of the shop.

She will not, however, be opening for the day: ‘I’m a very big royalist and at my time of life I won’t see another coronation and I wasn’t around to see the the Queen’s. I’m really looking forward to seeing it on telly comfortably at home. Charles should make a good King, he’s had the best apprenticeship with the Queen. He’s got big shoes to fill. I loved the Queen and I like Charles, but I’m not sure what he’s going to do as King. It’s difficult for him coming after his mother who was so popular. It looks like he wants to make changes and has made the Coronation smaller already.’

In the nearby Scrapstore Victoria Judd and Lizi Hamilton show off their Coronation window which has two model heads with crowns and bunting. The store, a charity also holds free dressmaking and similar workshops free, paid for by the store. Lizi said: ‘I’m a fan of the royals, a lot of us are and we like a good party, even if it’s a national one.’

Anne Snook is well qualified as designer of the Tavistock Museum Coronation exhibition — she was one of the hundreds of thousands who watched the Queen’s Coronation procession on the streets of London in 1952.

Anne, a museum volunteer, said: ‘The Queen’s Coronation was the highlight of my childhood. I was only ten, but I still remember the magnificent gold coach and the Queen looking gracious and smiling and waving at the crowds below us. I was with my two sisters on the roof of an office of a friend of our neighbour when we lived in Hampstead.’