Wedding DJ at Old Sherrill’s Inn in Fairview, NC

The Space

Old Sherrill’s Inn began as a log house built by John Ashworth around 1806, with hand-hewn timbers and a second log structure added around 1834. Bedford Sherrill bought the property, connected the two structures, and opened it as a tavern and inn around 1850, running it as a working stop on the Rutherfordton-to-Asheville turnpike, where stagecoach travelers changed horses roughly every eight miles on their way through the mountains.

The Sherrill family ran the inn until 1908, and it served travelers continuously from 1834 until 1909, a run of more than seventy years before it passed into private hands. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The house still holds its original hand-blown glass windows and its original brass and iron door locks, and the heart pine floors have carried presidents, preachers, and lawyers across more than two centuries.

Capacity & Layout

Old Sherrill’s Inn works almost entirely as an outdoor venue, with capacity running to 300 seated and 500 standing across several named fields and yards rather than one single room. The Ceremony Field measures 30 by 60 feet with an 8 by 20 foot natural stage, the Boxwood Yard runs 50 by 65, the Back Yard 35 by 65, and the Reception Field opens up to a full 75 by 225 feet with its own 8 by 20 foot bandstand.

The historic house itself is reserved for preparation rather than the ceremony or reception, offering two large rooms and a library where the wedding party can get ready, along with a 10 by 40 foot covered porch. Boxwood gardens, grapevine tunnels, and orchards spread across the grounds, and the property does not board guests overnight, so this is a day-use venue built around its outdoor fields rather than an inn stay.

Amenities

History carries real weight here: Mary Ann Morrison, who stayed at the inn in the 1850s, later became Stonewall Jackson’s second wife, and former President Millard Fillmore stopped at the inn in 1854. During the Civil War, Sherrill’s inn served both Union and Confederate troops passing through, and the inn once sold apples and fermented cider to travelers making the same trip on foot or horseback.

A stone springhouse, a log smokehouse, and a large barn still stand on the grounds, giving photographers period structures to work with beyond the main house itself. Portable restrooms and hand washing stations are set up for events, since the historic house was never built to support a large modern gathering on its own plumbing.

Location & Getting There

The inn sits on a hillside property in Fairview, on the historic turnpike route that once linked Rutherfordton to Asheville, putting it within reach of both the Asheville area and the mountains to the south for traveling guests. Parking and accessibility are not detailed in the venue’s own materials, which a couple should confirm directly when booking a site this old.

Because nearly every space here, the Ceremony Field, the Reception Field, the yards, is outdoors on open hillside ground, a DJ is working entirely in the open air rather than against walls or a ceiling, which means sound has nowhere to gather or echo but also nothing to hold it in, so a setup built for open fields, aimed carefully at the bandstand and stage areas, matters more here than it would in an enclosed room.