The Queen will visit Swindon next week, it has been confirmed.

Her Majesty will join the celebrations as Old Town jeweller Deacon & Son marks its 175th birthday.

Queen Camilla will go to Wood Street on Monday, January 22, to officially open a new clock workshop and tour a recently completed state-of-the-art Rolex watch workshop.

Staff including managing director Richard Deacon and his sister Sara – the sixth generation to manage the family-run business – will meet the monarch before the unveiling of a plaque.

Richard said: “I’m sure my great-great-great-uncle, George Deacon, would be absolutely delighted that the business he founded back in 1848 would one day receive a visit from a member of royalty.

“We’re absolutely thrilled that Her Majesty The Queen has agreed to join in our celebrations and helped us to mark such a significant moment in the history of Deacons.”

The shop and workshop are in the original premises of its founder, George Deacon, and has been selling a variety of luxury watches, clocks and jewellery for nearly two centuries.

On this proud day for the business, Her Majesty will be shown an original apprentice clock belonging to George Deacon, and the Regulator Clock from which Great Western Railway’s timepieces were calibrated, ensuring Deacons became esteemed timekeepers along the important rail route between London Paddington and Swansea.

The Queen will also meet staff who combine traditional skills and craftsmanship with the latest technology to make and repair clocks, watches and jewellery.

Highly-skilled craftspeople often work with Deacon & Son customers to offer a unique service by creating special, bespoke items that sometimes begin as a drawing on paper.

The company’s latest modernisation effort involved the completion of a major investment in the shop and its services.

In its earliest days, the jeweller was reliant on obtaining diamonds, precious and semi-precious stones from South America, in particular from Brazil where an agent was employed to bring back goods to England.

As an ambitious 26-year-old, George Deacon realised the need for time-keeping in a fast-growing town of the industrial revolution. The business was able to expand, winning one of the timing contracts for the Great Western Railway on the line between Paddington and Swansea from the early 1850s until 1893.

The business was responsible for supplying Swindon's first public clock on the Town Hall.