Mono-Monday: Leap - "Dog Leap Stairs"

Many thanks to MrsLinda for hosting Mono-Monday so well throughout February. Her fifth and final chosen topic today is “Leap”.
 
This photo is of the “Dog Leap Stairs” (or “Dog Loup Stairs”) in Newcastle. I’ve always been intrigued by these stairs but it was only today, in doing this blip, that I got round to looking up their history.
 
Seemingly the name refers to “a narrow slip of ground between houses”. The stairs lead up from the bottom end of The Side (a steep old street running up from near the Quayside towards the Castle entrance); the steps provide a shortcut to the Castle Garth. There are 69 steps in total (yes I did count them myself!) and they’re pretty steep. It is therefore quite impressive that (according to folklore), in 1772 when Baron Eldon (later Lord Chancellor of England) eloped with Bessie Surtees from a house on the Quayside, they made their escape on horseback up the Dog Leap Stairs. It must have been quite some horse!
 
(You can see Bessie Surtees rather splendid old house on a previous blip, here.)
 
I was slightly disappointed to learn that the stairs are not nowadays in exactly their original location. You can see part of the adjacent railway viaduct in the top of the photo; apparently when the viaduct was doubled in width in the 1890s the stairs were moved slightly to make space for it.
 
If you’re wondering why you may have heard of these stairs before, it may be because they feature on the song “Down to the Waterline” by Dire Straits:
 
‘Near misses on the dogleap stairways
French kisses in the darkened doorways.
A foghorn blowing out wild and cold
A policeman shines a light upon my shoulder’.

PS Fellow blipper sgwarnog has kindly pointed out (below) that "Dog leap Stairs" is also the title of a Kathryn Williams album.