Beware the vampire rabbit.....or is it a hare?

Beware walking along the back alley behind St Nicholas' Cathedral.....
The building facing the back of the cathedral was built in 1901 for the Church commissioners and is a building with a highly decorative, grand doorway with pink and cream Jacobean styling but there above it crouches a black rabbit with long red talons and teeth and a mad look in its eyes, as if it could pounce on you at any moment. This is one of Newcastle's strangest architectural mysteries, nicknamed the "Vampire rabbit".
After a bit of research on this, I found that it was originally white, which made it much more friendly looking! This link shows a photograph from 1988 , when it was still white.
There are many theories about the "Vampire rabbit" and most of them come to the conclusion that it is actually a HARE. Some have speculated that "mad" March hares were often used to decorate churches to represent Easter in church iconology and that this is a march hare in the style of the usual church gargoyle (hence the fangs and claws). Alternately it has been considered that the it was in honour of the engraver Thomas Bewick, who's work included many wide-eyed hares and who had a workshop in that street. A different theory is that the hare is in honour of Sir George HARE Philipson, a physician at the RVI and founder of the Masonic lodge. We will probably never know the reason behind this local curiosity.