Castles and Fortifications in Middle-earth

[Rumil]

One thing about the 3rd Age fortifications is thar they had been built by the Numenoreans using some mysterious technology or technique.

Orthanc is desrcibed as being of dark stone and very smooth, such that the ents could not gain a hand/tendril hold. To me this suggests some sort of stone like marble, that could be highly polished and almost glassy-smooth. I guess the joints between the blocks must have been very thin and accurate, this could be a product of great craftsmanship, such as ancient South American stone construction that is amazingly precisely put together without recourse to cement and mortar.

The walls of Minas Tirith seem to be much the same except in brilliant white stone, and marble does come in different colours, so this is consistent.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Rumil

One thing about the 3rd Age fortifications is thar they had been built by the Numenoreans using some mysterious technology or technique.

Orthanc is desrcibed as being of dark stone and very smooth, such that the ents could not gain a hand/tendril hold. To me this suggests some sort of stone like marble, that could be highly polished and almost glassy-smooth. I guess the joints between the blocks must have been very thin and accurate, this could be a product of great craftsmanship, such as ancient South American stone construction that is amazingly precisely put together without recourse to cement and mortar.

Well, it's said that Orthanc seemed like made of one piece of stone (or perhaps carven out of one piece of stone?), and I actually think it as well may have been just of one piece of stone. So really, no blocks, no joints, just one piece of stone. But I guess that would leave it out of the line of usual fortress-building.

[Kent2010]

Speaking of central towers, the Tower of Ecthelion in Minas Tirith, seems to be the stand out feature. We get two descriptions of the Tower - first through Pippin's eyes when he first sees the city, and again when the entire city is being described.

I wonder about the position of the Gates. The first gate looked East, but rest of the gates weren't in line, they wound back and forth to the topmost level:

But the gates were not set lin line: the Great Gate in the City Wall was at the east point of the circuit, but the next faced half south, and the third half north, and so to and fro upwards; so that the paved way that climbed towards the Citadel turned first this way and then that across the face of the hill.
-Minas Tirith

Has this staggering of gates back and forth, been used in any type of castle before?

Edoras seems to be similar to the hill forts in England and Wales. Basically, on top of a hill sat the hall, monastery, chapel, what have you and it was encircled by a wall - sometimes two walls. Some weren't just military fortifications but were towns and places for business.

'I see a white stream that comes down from the snows,' he said. 'Where it issues from the shadow of the vale a green hill rises upon the east. A dike and mighty wall and thorny fence encircle it. Within there rise the roofs of houses; and in the midst, set upon a green terrace, there stands aloft a great hall of Men...'
-King of the Golden Hall

Edoras is a place for both. You have people living within the walls, but also the King who has his guard and other soldiers.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Has this staggering of gates back and forth, been used in any type of castle before?

Although a total of seven is pretty extravagant, it was fairly standard NOT to put gates in a line, which would give an attacker a straight shot through them; generally some setup was designed so that if the enemy breached the first gate, they would have to move sideways between (manned) walls to get to the second.

Tolkien incorporates something like this into Caras Galadhon, whose curtain-wall overlaps forming a lengthy enclosed passage between its ends.

[Aiwendil]

William Cloud Hicklin wrote:

There is IIRC a Tolkien illustration of Gondolin- a circular walled city atop a flattened hill, rather like Carcasonne but more geometric, and with a very tall central watchtower, presumably that of Turgon's palace.

I had forgotten about that drawing by Tolkien. One interesting thing about it is that, though it's hard to tell from such a distance, it appears that apart from its position atop Amon Gwared, the only thing defending the city is a single encircling wall - no barbicans or outworks or even, as far as I can discern, embattled mural towers. But then, of course, the strength of Gondolin always lay more in its geographical location than anything else. We also know that the passage into the valley was guarded by no fewer than seven gates, per 'Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin'.

Tolkien liked his tall central towers

And indeed, he seems to use the Sindarin words 'Barad' and 'Minras', both of which he glosses as 'tower', as generic words for any fortress.

Legate of Amon Lanc wrote:

Well, it's said that Orthanc seemed like made of one piece of stone (or perhaps carven out of one piece of stone?), and I actually think it as well may have been just of one piece of stone. So really, no blocks, no joints, just one piece of stone. But I guess that would leave it out of the line of usual fortress-building.

True, but if the people of Gondor indeed had the skill to carve a tower out of a single massive block of stone, this probably has implications for other buildings in Middle-earth. Might, for example, the walls of Minas Tirith or even of the Hornburg have been solid stone as well?

William Cloud Hicklin wrote:

Although a total of seven is pretty extravagant, it was fairly standard NOT to put gates in a line, which would give an attacker a straight shot through them; generally some setup was designed so that if the enemy breached the first gate, they would have to move sideways between (manned) walls to get to the second.

Indeed, the whole city of Minas Tirith seems in a way like a massive concentric castle, designed to subject an attacker to as much fire from the walls as possible on the way inward toward the central keep. It's also built on a steep incline, so archers on, for example, the second wall would probably have a clear line of sight to attackers outside the first (and so on). I don't know if the walls were close enough together, though, that defenders on the second wall could fire over the first wall at enemies outside the gate.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

One also wonders if the tunnels where the circles of Minas Tirith passed through the 'keel' were barred by gates and/or potcullises, and whether galleries with loopholes and murder-holes were installed.

I know I would have

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Whatever stone was used for the outer wall, and Orthanc, it wouldn't have been marble, which is a rather soft stone, and which vegetation can tear up pretty easily (as can be seen in any old graveyard). For Orthanc basalt is a a candidate, being hard, dense, black and capable of a high polish; the uneroded basalt "necks" of old volcanoes provide the crags on which many fortified places in southern France were built. But a comparable white stone?

Of course, one can't push Middle-earth MagiTech(tm) too hard. Seriously- try to find a metal as ductile as copper but simultaneously harder (and lighter) than steel........

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

True, but if the people of Gondor indeed had the skill to carve a tower out of a single massive block of stone, this probably has implications for other buildings in Middle-earth. Might, for example, the walls of Minas Tirith or even of the Hornburg have been solid stone as well?

Well, but first, I think, there is a difference between "people of Gondor" and Númenoreans, who were the ones who built Orthanc, I think. If it was them, even. Orthanc is a bit of mysterious piece of rock, I think. But whichever is possible, it really may be that it was made the way Rumil said.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Hmmm- one could I suppose postulate that the Ring of Isengard was an ancient volcanic caldera, and Orthanc itself the basaltic neck of the long-gone cone... of course, calderas generally only form when the whole damn thing explodes....