Nicholas Orme


Nicholas Orme FSA FRHistS is a British historian specialising in the Middle Ages and Tudor period, focusing on the history of children, and ecclesiastical history, with a particular interest in South West England.
Orme is an emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and has worked as a visiting scholar at, among others, Merton College, Oxford, St John's College, Oxford, and the University of Arizona. He retired on 31 May 2007 and is a canon of the Church of England.
His 2021 book, Going to Church in Medieval England, was shortlisted for the 2022 Wolfson History Prize.
Orme was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1973 and of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1982.
In addition to his scholarly works, Orme has published Ten Cathedral Ghosts, a volume of historically themed ghost stories in the tradition of M. R. James and A. N. L. Munby.

Selected works

  • English Schools in the Middle Ages, Routledge,
  • Education in the West of England, 1066–1548, University of Exeter Press,
  • The Minor Clergy of Exeter Cathedral: 1300–1548 – a list of the minor officers, vicars choral, annuellars, secondaries and choristers. University of Exeter Press
  • Early British Swimming, 55 B.C.–1719 A.D: with the first swimming treatise in English, 1595. University of Exeter Press
  • From Childhood to Chivalry: Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, Routledge,
  • Exeter Cathedral as It Was, 1050–1550, Devon Books
  • Education in Early Tudor England: Magdalen College Oxford and Its School, 1480–1540, Magdalen College
  • Education and Society in Mediaeval and Renaissance England, Hambledon Continuum,
  • Table Manners for Children, by John Lydgate; with translation and introduction by Nicholas Orme
  • Unity and Variety: a History of the Church in Devon and Cornwall
  • English Church Dedications: With a Survey of Cornwall and Devon, University of Exeter Press
  • The Saints of Cornwall, Oxford University Press,
  • Medieval Children, New Haven: Yale University Press
  • Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Tudor England, New Haven: Yale University Press,
  • Cornish Wills, 1342–1540. Devon and Cornwall Record Society,
  • Cornwall and the Cross. Chichester: Phillimore
  • The Victoria History of the County of Cornwall: Religious History to 1559 v. 2,
  • Exeter Cathedral: The First Thousand Years, c. 400–1550, Impress Books,.
  • The Churches of Medieval Exeter, Impress Books,.
  • Going to Church in Medieval England, Yale University Press,
  • Tudor Children, Yale University Press,

    Works as editor or collaborator

  • Nicholas Roscarrock's Lives of the Saints ;
  • With Margaret Webster: The English Hospital, 1070–1570, Yale University Press;
  • With David Lepine: Death and Memory in Medieval Exeter, Devon & Cornwall Record Society;
For a more extensive list of Orme's publications, see and the .