Tennessee Renaissance Festival to Celebrate 40 Years

For Mike Freeman, the owner of Castle Gwynn in Arrington, it’s all about the castle. The edifice is a childhood dream come true and a constant creative project, and he needed to find a way to sustain it. 

“I had a castle — I thought, 'I need to do something,'” Freeman says. “I went to a Renaissance festival, had a great time. I thought I could open it once a year to the public so I can live here the rest of time. That's my whole point — the whole reason for starting the festival.” 

Forty years later, it’s clear Freeman was onto something. Over the next five weekends, nearly 100,000 festivalgoers are set to descend upon Castle Park in Arrington for the 40th Annual Tennessee Renaissance Festival, which Williamson County Parks and Recreation began operating in 2022.

Thousands of them will also be shuttled to Castle Gwynn to take in Freeman’s masterpiece, including a recently finished exterior complete with English crest and a screening of a recently added tour video. (Many travel to see the site of Taylor Swift's "Love Story" music video.) 

In addition to the 80 or so returning vendors and performers, 10 fresh artisans will be added for the anniversary this year, including a costume rental booth, a ring featuring local armored combat competitors and performances from musical duo Damh and Dove. That's all according to Devon Russell, Castle Park events manager. 

Longtime jousting group The Free Lancers retired last year, but Ohio's Combatant's Keep will be stepping in their place. 

“They're fantastic,” Russell says. “They're very high-energy. They have some war horses. I'm very excited to see this joust this year. I mean, they're really jousting. I've seen lances go through armor and shields. As the festival manager, it makes me nervous, but as a patron, it is very exciting.” 

Russell says performers especially like Tennessee’s festival, calling it the “biggest little faire.” Some of the larger festivals welcome 30,000 per day, so the this one's slightly smaller scale is something performers can more easily wrap their arms around. Repeat customers also add to the small-world feel. 

“Even though we see 10,000 people a day, there's a sense of community,” she says. “You start to recognize people because they're coming almost every weekend. We have a huge group of these people that come every single weekend.”

Guests will have five weekends this year to see Castle Gwynn, but Freeman is planning to soon offer more than just the castle's peak Renaissance Festival visitations. In the next year-and-a-half, he plans to complete a venue and museum in the space. Freeman and his wife Jackie Harmon were the first to get married at Castle Gwynn in 1988, and a lucky few insiders have been granted access to the space over the years. But Freeman anticipates the business could boom. A friend in the castle-owner community in Scotland hosts more than 300 weddings per year, sometimes up to three per day. 

It’s clear that Freeman is thinking more and more about his legacy. Just last year he finished his own tomb cover, cast from a suit of armor that he had taken 30 years to make. His idea of a vacation is to take one week off per year and work on a suit of armor, he jokes. 

When completed, the museum will surely have the original drawing of a castle from when Freeman was a senior in high school. He also has a fossil of an Irish elk, a species that went extinct 10,000 years ago, among other treasures and oddities. 

“This way, the things I’ve collected I’ll be able to share with people,” he says. “You can pick up a real medieval sword. I mean, where do you go to do that?” 

Freeman is also continuing work on an additional bedroom, bathroom and his own “man cave.” The work in progress is the fun part for Freeman, who has never used a computer or Wi-Fi. On the site of Castle Gwynn, his creativity flows without much interruption, and he invites visitors to do the same. 

“Having the museum here and the events center will hopefully be able to perpetuate, let the people know that anything is possible," Freeman says. "You can start with zero and go from there.”

This article was first published by our sister publication, the Williamson Scene.