Helm's Deep

The main purpose was to guard the southern pass between the Misty and White Mountains. Thus it is sort of a twin to Isengard, which was meant to guard the northern side. Its specific location was strategic, given the value of the resources of the Glittering Caves. Then there is the fact it is close to Edoras. This allows Rohan's government to retreat here in times of crisis. During the Long Winter and the War of the Ring, it served this purpose well.

How could this be improved? First, lets look at the Deeping Wall. The most bone headed in the design here was there was no moat. Seriously – that same stream that was the fatal weakness of the fort could have been its strongest asset. Add the moat and the mine could have been stopped, along with attempts at tunneling and the use of the ladders. By itself, two of the biggest threats to the fort could have been stopped by the moat. Then, add in proper battlements so that the tall parts go up to high enough to cover people’s heads and the short parts up to their chests, then the issues with the attacker’s suppressing fire would have been solved. Hoardings, or temporary roofing used on fort walls, would have made this even better. Because of the moat, I doubt machicolations would have been too much of an added benefit on the main wall.   Now, lets go to the outer wall protecting the keep. The walkway up to it has no draw bridge. Add one and the attackers could not have been able to get their battering ram up to the door to break it down. This would be even better if there was a moat, but as we know there was not one. Then, the door itself could have been reinforced with iron, at least in the form of studs. A portcullis would have been an amazing benefit to the gatehouse, adding another thing to break through. If you add a tower on either side and machicolations along the length of the walls and towers, the troops “lucky” enough to be able to batter down the gate could still be shot. Add a similar reinforced door and portcullis at the rear of the hall and you slow down the attackers even more. This, in an intelligently built gate house would then have murder holes and arrow slits, making the hall an epic kill zone of death. The extra height here means that the ladders would not be an issue even if the moat was not added.   Now, once you get into the area between the two walls, it is actually quite effective. The narrow space to walk between them makes it hard to move battering rams in and turns the area into another kill zone. The main weakness here is that there are no rear facing battlements, allowing archers to fire up on the walls the second they break in – reducing the effectiveness of the kill zone. This is a small tweak in the grand scheme though.   The huge missed opportunity though is the complete absence of a gate house on the second wall. Add one like I described above and the forces that got between the walls would be massacred. Especially with machicolations on the inner wall and rear facing battlements on the outer. The keep has little relevance in the movies, though second floor machicolations, flanking towers and a reinforced gate could have been added but were not. Keep in mind the manpower for these can easily be found from withdrawing troops from other sections of the fort when holding those no longer is viable. There is also a staircase leading up to the keep that could have easily fit a single gate, battlement and two towers near the entrance.

Lets start with the basics. First, I will be using the movie layout and numbers. The keep is built onto the side of a mountain with two walls surrounding it – both with single, outer facing battlements. The inner wall has an archway that allows people to get through. The Hornburg- the main tower – was 300 feet tall and the top of the inner wall 100 feet above the ground. The Horburg had all the stables, storerooms, the armory and living quarters dug into the rock. The outer wall has a gate house with a hall running into the interior and regular (but rotting) wooden doors at each end. Extending in front of this door is a normal walkway leading up from the field. There are two protruding battlements next to the gatehouse – though there does not to be any rooms inside or any cover on top that would allow me to call them proper towers. On the mountain side of the door there is a postern gate.   On the other, the valley is blocked by a high curtain wall called the Deeping Wall. It was a solid 300 feet long and 30 feet tall. I have no figures exactly for how wide it is, but it is described as being wide enough for 4 men to stand abreast. This wall has a small stream that runs through it in the middle, with a culvert allowing the water through. There are mountain passes that could be used to escape through and massive caves that can hold large numbers of people and supplies.   In the books, the design was generally the same with some differences. For example, the stables and armory was still dug into the mountain like the keep in the movie. The keep was in the same basic spot but was free standing. There was an inner bailey that has a gate that is right in line with the main entrance. All the walls, including the Deeping Wall, are 20 feet thick. The Deeping wall was a solid 250 feet long. The main entrance to the core area hugged the mountains and crossed over the Deeping Stream that runs under the walls. This main entrance was rather steep close to the main gate. The central area is situated on a low hill. The outer wall that the causeway connects to forms a sort of ice cream cone shape. The circular part contains the outer bailey while the triangle portion connects to the Deeping Wall blocking access to the valley behind. There is a gap in the circle where the walls connect with the mountains. It also has a postern gate and rear gate.   This design comes so close to getting the sizes right that the errors that do exist for the book version are just that much more annoying to someone as nerdy as me. The keep is about 100 feet tall compared to the inner and outer walls standing at about 25. The outer bailey is 200 feet across and the inner is only 100 feet across. That means one can stand on top of the keep and shoot arrows at an attacking enemy – even when they are still outside the outer walls. But because the inner walls are the same height, they can’t do this. So, if they were extended up another 25 feet you would have significantly greater defensive depth.   Generally this set up is better in my opinion as it allows greater field of fire. There are some limitations that the movie version does better though. One, putting the keep inside the mountain allows for last ditch retreat should things go badly. Another is the height of the walls corrects the issue of overlapping fields of fire to a degree. Though the movie version loses points in comparison by not having a free standing keep that can add another base of fire. The movie version also has the walls close enough together with their entrances offset so that moving a battering ram up to them would be much harder. The problem with the movie version is that it had no second gate, not the placement of it if they had bothered to put said gate.   One feature that is in the book but not in the movie is Helm’s Dike. This was a 20 foot high rampart resembling a cliff with a ditch in front of it. It forms an arc one mile long located a quarter of a mile out from the Deeping Wall. It was not particularly strong, but good enough. During the Battle of Helm's Deep, the defenders were able to kill many uruks before retreating in good order. The retreat was forced though as the dike was partially destroyed.