A note on a broken-out stone and a photo of it. Sometimes you have to rely on coincidences like these to find out the origin of a gable stone , because there was no shortage of half moons in Maastricht. The annotation on the half moon read: Brugstraat.
There was no half moon in the Maastrichter Brugstraat, so the only place to look at was the Wijcker Brugstraat. There was indeed such a house name between "The Golden Head" and "The Sun", but it disappeared during the reconstruction of the street.
Bernardusstraat 11/13 was also called "the half moon". In 1638 it was in the news as the brewery of Jan Lansmans, who was beheaded for treason to the Spaniards together with others such as father Vinck.
Further moons were probably to be seen in Kleine Staat 24, Maastrichter Smedenstraat 14, Muntstraat 38 and Wolfstraat 6.
A half moon with inscription and year IN DEN HALVEN MAEND 1771 is mentioned in several sources in Maastricht Muntstraat 38. And now, on the facade of Dorpsstraat 30 in Gulpen, a half moon with specifically that caption (Maend instead of maen) and the year 1771 can be seen.
This is actually too beautiful to be just a coincidence. How this gable stone from Maastricht ended up in Gulpen is not known.
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