Hindon is a planned settlement, unlike most English villages which have evolved piecemeal over the millennia.

The main London-Exeter road ran across the downs, and in 1754 there were fourteen inns and public houses in the village, with associated stabling for the horses.

In 1830 London coaches from Exeter left daily from the Swan and from Barnstaple nightly from the Lamb Inn, and there were corresponding services westwards.

[4] Several reasons for Hindon's decline have been put forward: its disenfranchisement in 1832; the railway connection of London to Taunton and Exeter in the 1840s which reduced coach traffic significantly (coupled with the opening of the station at Tisbury, 2 miles (3.2 km) southeast of Hindon, in 1859); and a general decrease in road traffic.

Hindon is mentioned in A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs by W. H. Hudson, published in 1910.

For although sober, it is contented and even merry, and exhibits such a sweet friendliness toward the stranger within its gates as to make him remember it with pleasure and gratitude.'

In 1804 the church (known as the Free Chapel)[6] comprised a nave and chancel with a south tower, the lower part of which served as a porch.

Parish status was assigned in 1869[6] and in November of that same year the Free Chapel was demolished, along with a few adjacent buildings, to make way for a new church.

By July 1871, construction was completed, and the new parish church of St John the Baptist, designed by T. H. Wyatt, was consecrated.

In 1836 a room in Hindon was certified for Primitive Methodists and five years later the Providence Chapel was built for them behind the south side of the High Street.

The village has a community shop and post office, a dispensing GP surgery, and a social club with function room and skittle alley.

[8] In September 2024, Hindon was listed by The Sunday Times as one of the UK's "20 best secret villages to live in".