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Withered Heath

Arda Middle-Earth Beleriand Grey Mountains (ancient) Grey Mountains
Valley Middle-Earth

The Withered Heath was a dragon-infested valley in the eastern Grey Mountains in northern Rhovanion.

Other version of the legendarium

In one of the earliest versions of the legendarium, the Withered Heath was the name of the Heath of the Sky-roof, a location of Tol Eressëa near Tavrobel, after a great battle between Men who came to the island.

In the manuscript of The Hobbit, Bladorthin (the pre-cursor to Gandalf) says that the Withered Heath is "where the Great Dragons used to live".

Description

The Withered Heath was a long narrow valley in the eastern part of the Grey Mountains, where they forked into two thin ranges. On the floor of this long east-west valley between the mountains was a heath, burned and blackened by its inhabitants, being the breeding-ground of dragons.

At one time the dragons of the Heath had infested the Grey Mountains and the lands beyond, and in the closing decades of the Third Age, the Dragon Smaug terrorised the inhabitants of the north. Smaug was the last of the great dragons, but lesser members of his kind remained.