Currently located next to the Castle Keep, the Lowping-on Stone stood outside the Golden Lion in the Bigg Market for several centuries and is circled in red on the old photo. It has been carved into a set of steps which people climbed before leaping – or ‘lowping’, in the Geordie parlance – onto a horse.
The Golden Lion and its next-door neighbour the Unicorn were a pair of Elizabethan inns on the west side of the Bigg Market, a few doors up from Pudding Chare. They supplied beer and a bed for the night to the farmers who travelled on horseback from Northumberland and Durham to attend the many markets in Newcastle.
The Lowping-on Stone is clearly ancient but the word ‘lowp’ is much older still, coming from the Old Norse ‘hloup’, meaning ‘leap’. The initial ‘h’ disappeared over time and old maps of Newcastle show Dog Leap Stairs as Dog Loup Stairs, a term referring to a strip of land that was so narrow a dog could loup across it. The word is still commonly used by Geordies with the modern spelling ‘lowp’, as is the variation ‘lop’, which means a leaping flea.
The old photo was taken in 1880, two years before both inns were bought and demolished by the shotgun manufacturer William Rochester Pape and replaced with a showroom and warehouse for his business. Pape’s weapons are still highly prized but he’s more famous for organising what was reputedly the world’s first Dog Show at the nearby Town Hall in 1859.
He donated the Lowping-on Stone to the Society of Antiquaries, who placed it next to the Castle Keep.