Stepped gable

The oldest examples can be seen in Ghent (Flanders, Belgium) and date from the 12th century, such as the house called Spijker on the Graslei, and some other Romanesque buildings in the city.

These gables are numerous in Belgium, France (French Flanders, Eastern Normandy, Picardy and Alsace), the Netherlands, all Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and the Baltic States.

[3] Examples of Scottish crow-stepped gables can be seen at Muchalls Castle, Monboddo House, and the Stonehaven Tolbooth, all late 16th and early 17th century buildings.

Another version of the stepped gable with a purely decorative role is found in so-called noble or urban architecture, mainly in northern and central Europe, such as Germany, Flanders and the Netherlands.

In rural architecture, redents are generally covered with flat stones to protect them from the rain, prevent water infiltration into the load-bearing wall, and enable the roofer or road worker to place his tools.

In the Rhône-Alpes region, they are typical of the architecture of eastern Nord-Isère (Morestel and Crémieu cantons) and neighboring southern Bugey (villages of Izieu, Prémeyzel, Lhuis, Brégnier-Cordon, Arbignieu, etc.).

[11]In Frangy, Haute-Savoie, not far from the Bugey region, a rare example of this type of gabled roof can be found at the Bel-Air farm,[12] which is listed as a historic monument.

[16] The gables at Château de Pierrefonds, on the other hand, were designed by Viollet-le-Duc in the neo-Gothic style of the 19th century, and are a cross between Soissonnais and Flanders.

[17] There's also a more monumental, urban version of cusped gables, found mainly in northern Europe, whose function is exclusively decorative or symbolic.

They can be found, with various local variations, in Flanders (in the broadest sense) and the Netherlands, but also throughout northern Germany, Poland, the Baltic states and Scandinavia, particularly in the former German Hanseatic towns, for which this type of gable is a striking architectural symbol, and where they spread at the same time as the backsteingotik (“brick Gothic”) style.

They were a characteristic feature of urban construction where, by virtue of taxes on the width of houses, people came to build high and privilege this aspect of the facade.

From the early 19th century to the present day, neo-regionalist architecture has revived the use of crenellated gables in both Belgian and French Flanders: Tournai's Grand-Place, the reconstruction of Ypres and Bailleul after the First World War, buildings in Lille, and so on.Convenient access to the roof ridge motivated the crow-step design, along with the availability of squarish stones to accomplish this form of construction.

A similar form is found in traditional Chinese architecture called zh:馬頭牆 (pinyin: mǎtóu qiáng), which literally means "horse-head wall".