Talk: Elizabethan Exeter’s middle classes

Buckfastleigh History Society hosts a talk on Exeter’s Elizabethan middle classes with Dr Kate Osborne at the Valiant Soldier Museum and Information Centre, Buckfastleigh, on Monday 19 January 2026. Explore the lives and influence of the city’s middling sort.

Buckfastleigh History Society opens the new year with a January talk that takes us into Elizabethan Exeter. Come and join us for an engaging evening at the Valiant Soldier Museum and Information Centre, Buckfastleigh.

The talk, Exeter's Elizabethan Middling Sorts - Rediscovering the Middle classes in Elizabethan Exeter, will be given by Dr Kate Osborne. The “middling sorts” were the merchants, tradespeople and skilled artisans who sat between labourers and the elite in the late 1500s, shaping the daily life and prosperity of cities such as Exeter.

It’s a fitting setting: the Valiant Soldier is our much-loved local museum in the former Valiant Soldier pub, preserved much as it was when it closed in the 1960s. Please note, this talk will be on a Monday.

Date: Monday 19 January 2026
Time: 7.30pm
Location: Valiant Soldier Museum and Information Centre, Buckfastleigh
Speaker: Dr Kate Osborne
Admission: £5 (card payments available)

Everyone is welcome — we’d love to see you there for a warming dose of local history on a winter’s evening.

For contact details for Buckfastleigh History Society, please see the group’s page on Community Groups.