Something isn't historically accurate on the front side :-)

[gserim]

[George]

Do you mean these horizontal figures? I can’t find an English translation. They where used to decorate the outlet of the rain gutter. But the rain gutter is somewhere else.

George

[gserim]

That’s a good start, at any rate …

[Fineus]

The English would be “gargoyles”

A quick Reddit search taught me something else;

“Gargouiller” is an old French that means to gurgle, from the old word for throat, “gargoule”

Gargoyle

Apparently they fell out of popularity because some found them frightening and the heavier ones fell off, causing damage.

That could be why @gserim appears to have a garden statue of a dog as the first gargoyle in that picture

Oh, they could also be Weeping Angels, of course…

Weeping Angel

[gserim]

Ha, ha, the dog is historic. But there are other gargoyles …

[George]

The Dutch word is waterspuger. It contains water and the verb to spit. It spits the water preventing it coming down via the wall. Later rain pipes where used. Also on the picture.

A picture from a ,modern, churh in Lille,France. You can see the whole in its mouth.

George

[gserim]

This type of cap wasn’t very common in the Middle Ages—the conservator has left his mark here

[Mike_Murphy_1948 (Michael Murphy)]

@gserim

the conservator has left his mark here

I think this is a fairly standard practice among stonemasons. The guy who redid the heads in front of the Sheldonian theatre in Oxford (it’s where degree ceremonies are held) modelled them on the then heads (there is no standard title: Rector for my college, Warden for All Souls, Master for thers’) of Oxford colleges. Don’t know who was more offended: the chaps whose heads were displayed or those passed over.