Following the Long Winter of TA 2758, the Dunlendings were besieged and starved into surrender by Fréaláf Hildeson.
While they held the fortress, using it as a base for attacks on the Westfold, they could not gain access to the impenetrable tower. Eventually the tower was closed and locked and its keys were taken to Minas Tirith to be kept by the Stewards of Gondor.Įventually in TA 2710 the hereditary Captains of the fortress died out and Isengard came under the control of the Dunlendings. Thus, Orthanc was now known as one of the seven towers of the Dúnedain, housing the seventh seeing stone brought back from Númenor by Elendil.Īngrenost suffered greatly during the Great Plague of TA 1636, and the garrison steadily dwindled through the Age. Within the fortified walls of the tower was placed one of the palantíri, the Stone of Orthanc. The exact date of construction of Orthanc and establishment of Isengard is unknown however it must have been built between SA 3320, the time of the establishment of Arnor and Gondor, and SA 3430, when the Last Alliance of Elves and Men was formed.
Above the door there was a balcony, and many tall windows higher up.
The only entrance to the tower was reached by a stair of twenty-seven steps, the door could only be opened with the Keys of Orthanc. When Gríma Wormtongue later threw the palantír of Orthanc from a high window, it fell on the stairs, causing the rail to snap and part of the staircase to break. Until the Ents that besieged Isengard during the War of the Ring managed to inflict slight damage on the tower, but their efforts ultimately proved to be futile. No weaponry or magic that existed on Arda was known to be able to harm it. The tower was constructed out of four piers of stone and then hardened by an unknown process. Between them was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand five hundred feet above the plain." - The tower as described by J.R.R. A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard: four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one, but near the summit they opened into gaping horns, their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives. It was fashioned by the builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills. The roads were paved with stone-flags dark and hard and beside their borders instead of trees there marched long lines of pillars, some of marble, some of copper and of iron, joined by heavy chains, to the centre all the roads ran between their chains. But no green thing grew there in the latter days of Saruman. Once it had been green and filled with avenues, and groves of fruitful trees, watered by streams that flowed from the mountains to a lake. one who passed in and came at length out of the echoing tunnel, beheld a plain, a great circle, somewhat hollowed like a vast shallow bowl: a mile it measured from rim to rim. Description " A great ring-wall of stone, like towering cliffs, stood out from the shelter of the mountain-side, from which it ran and then returned again.