• (1973) English Schools in the Middle Ages, Routledge, ISBN 0416160808
• (1976) Education in the West of England, 1066-1548, University of Exeter Press, ISBN 0859890414
• (1980) The Minor Clergy of Exeter Cathedral: 1300-1548 -- a list of the minor officers, vicars choral, annuellars, secondaries and choristers. University of Exeter Press ISBN 0859891755
• (1983) Early British Swimming, 55 B.C.-1719 A.D: with the first swimming treatise in English, 1595. University of Exeter Press ISBN 0859891348
• (1984) From Childhood to Chivalry: Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, Routledge, ISBN 0416748309
• (1987) Exeter Cathedral as It Was, 1050-1550, Devon Books ISBN 0861147855
• (1988) Education in Early Tudor England: Magdalen College Oxford and Its School, 1480-1540, Magdalen College
• (1989) Education and Society in Mediaeval and Renaissance England, Hambledon Continuum, ISBN 1852850035
• (1989) Table Manners for Children, by John Lydgate ; with translation and introduction by Nicholas Orme ISBN 0907596177
• (1991) Unity and Variety: a History of the Church in Devon and Cornwall ISBN 0859893553
• (1996) English Church Dedications: With a Survey of Cornwall and Devon, University of Exeter Press ISBN 0859895165
• (2000) The Saints of Cornwall, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198207654
• (2001) Medieval Children, New Haven: Yale University Press ISBN 0300085419
• (2006) Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Tudor England, New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 0300111029
• (2006) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article by Nicholas Orme on the theme ‘School founders and patrons in England, 597—1560’, ODNB online edn, [1] accessed 23 May 2007]
• (2007) The Victoria History of the County of Cornwall: Religious History to 1559 v. 2, ISBN 1904356125
• (2009) Exeter Cathedral: The First Thousand Years, c.400— 1550, Impress Books, ISBN: 978 0 9556239 8 1.

Works as editor or collaborator

• Nicholas Roscarrock's Lives of the Saints (1992) ISBN 0901853356
• With Margaret Webster: (1995) The English Hospital, 1070-1570, Yale University Press, ISBN 0300060580
• With David Lepine: (2003) Death and Memory in Medieval Exeter, Devon & Cornwall Record Society, ISBN 0901853461