Horninghold has the appearance of an Edwardian estate village, with elegant houses and cottages generously spaced among trees and shrubs. Some writers have called it a 'garden village'. However, that implies a centralised plan on a greenfield site. If we look at the 1885 Ordnance Survey Map, which was drawn up before most of the improvements were made, we can see that the imprint of the village is fundamentally the same as it is today.

Instead, the Hardcastle family, who became lords of the manor in the late 1870s, created a modern estate village largely based on what was already there. The more prestigious period houses were remodelled in an Arts & Crafts tradition and between these, new buildings either replaced older ones, or infilled areas of open space. There is no evidence of a master plan and the works gradually evolved over forty years in two distinct phases, with different patrons and architects.

The 1885 map also shows there was already a considerable amount of tree planting in the village, most significantly in the grounds of Horninghold House, which fronts onto the main Hallaton Road. These grounds still provide much of the substantial tree cover today.

The period houses in Horninghold are mainly built in local ironstone, which has an attractive rich brown colouration. Some of the finer dressings are in limestone from quarried further to the east, around Stamford. Several roofs have Collyweston slate, while some of the newer houses have tiled roofs, either in slate or clay. There is one thatched cottage.

It is a measure of the extent of the estate works undertaken by the Hardcastles, that today Horninghold has no intact period properties older than the 1880s. All earlier houses have either been substantially redeveloped, replaced or removed.

The earliest domestic fabric to survive dates from the period when the Turpin and related Pretyman families held the manor, a period stretching from the late 16th century through to 1676. This era saw some investment in the estate, which was not to be renewed until the Hardcastles.

The most significant project was the construction of Horninghold's first Manor House. This was erected around 1600 by William Turpin of Knaptoft, probably as a dower house. The site he chose was just south of the church, with a driveway from Hallaton Road. Two stone fireplaces, a mullioned window and a painted panel bearing Turpin's arms still survive in the remodelled house.

Some 17th century fabric, including a mullion window, still survives at Horninghold House, suggesting this was also a high status building. The most visible remnants from the 17th century, though, are the ground floor of the the Rectory, with its ironstone mullion windows, and the street-facing gable wall of the former Globe public house on East Norton Road. Again this has ironstone mullion windows, set over three floors.

The first buildings to be erected in the village after the Hardcastles bought the estate in the late 1870s were all new build properties. All these were designed by the established Goddard architectural practice in Leicester. Joseph Goddard had been brought into partnership in the company in 1862 and by the 1870s he was the driving force in the expansion of their work. Joseph established a reputation for the gothic, designing the ambitious Midland Bank and landmark Clock Tower in Leicester. Nearer to Horninghold, he designed the red brick church at Tur Langton. He later followed the domestic vernacular trend and it is this style which was employed at Horninghold. One of his earliest houses in this idiom is Brookfield House in Leicester of 1876-8.

Thomas Hardscastle's first commission was a substantial hunting stables attached to Horninghold Hall. It was built from high-quality red brick, with an early use of cavity construction, and could house up to 30 hunters, as revealed when Alexander Cross was renting it in 1916. 

This work was followed by estate houses. Three Ways Cottage and Cedar Cottage, on the corner of Hallaton and East Norton roads, were erected in 1883 to designs by Goddard in red brick, with pierced barge boards and a monogrammed terracotta date panel (also seen at the stables). This work was supplemented the following year by three smaller brick cottages further down East Norton Road (End Cottage, Middle Cottage and Chestnut Cottage), which have a strong vernacular flavour, with flanking half-timbered gables carrying contrasting patterns, side porches and first floor oriel windows. Next land was infilled between Cedar Cottage and the Globe public house for a pair of semi-detached cottages, again in red brick with mock timber-framed first stories. These were built for the estate gardener and woodsman.

The transition of ownership of the estate to Thomas Augustus Hardcastle in 1902, coincided with Henry Langton Goddard taking over the reins at the Goddard architectural practice - one assumes his second name was taken from Tur Langton, where his father designed the church.

This new team brough about a change of approach. Existing buildings of value were refashioned in the style of the age, while infill sites were occupied with contemporary Arts & Crafts style houses.

For historic buildings the blueprint was increasing the scale and adding new fabric in a complementary Tudor/Jacobean form using local stone and slate with mullion, bay and dormer windows and tall stone chimney stacks.

This work began at Tudor House, which was adapted from an 18th-century farmhouse in 1905 to serve as an estate office and later agent’s house. Townend House (now Ambertone House) and Brook Cottage (now Midsummer Cottage) followed soon after. The Manor House reworking dates to 1908, while the Globe public house is a little later and involved the conversion of the pub into a house. Also remodelled were Horninghold House/Hall, which was developed from a 17th century farmhouse, as was the smaller Orchard Farm. The 17th century vicarage, meanwhile, was given a new roof, dormers and barge boards.

To this redevelopment work were added a few new buildings, which took their inspiration from Arts & Crafts architects such as Edwin Lutyens and Charles Voysey. In 1901, the influential architect, Charles Voysey, started work on the Pastures at North Luffenham, just the other side of Uppingham, for Miss Gertrude Conant. This is perhaps the region’s best example of domestic Arts & Crafts architecture.

Henry Goddard started designing buildings in the Arts & Crafts idiom from 1901, when he produced drawings for a house at Whissendine in Rutland. His largest commission in this style was Great Glen Manor of 1906, which has gabled cross wings, a timber-framed porch and rendered walls.

Home Farm is a classic twin gabled composition, originally two cottages, with carved fruit barge boards and a date panel for 1905. The following year the picturesque Thatched Cottage was put up next door in the form of a ‘cottage orne’ (this later became the Post Office), while just on from that, by the stream, a new stable block was constructed with seven boxes and three stalls; a saddle and mess room; a mixing house, and two bedrooms above for the ostlers. The need for an additional stables may have been because the ones at Horninghold House/Hall were being rented to a tenant - certainly there was a tenant there in 1916. The stables were later converted into Bridgeford House.