Last night Mr Truesdale, from along the road, brought round his extensive collection of locally historic documents, and we learned much. It will take a visit to the public records office in Belfast to unearth the detail we need, but now we do know what we are looking for, which is very helpful. What we did discover though, is the probable age of this house.
Shown here is a bit of the very first ordnance survey map of Ireland, drawn up between 1829 and 1841. At the top right is a lake (which is now David next door’s woods), and just to the left of that is….nothing. 
Now look at the second edition Ordnance survey map, used in Griffiths Valuation, dated 1863 – 
The little lake is no more – it is now marked in as bog, but just to the left of it is plot 38, and our house has appeared. So…our house definitely existed in 1863, but cannot be older than 1829. So now we have a window of 34 years during which we know someone rented our little bit of bog from the Crawford Estate, and built themselves a house. Perhaps Alexander Speers was that person. We hope that the Crawford estate records will yield that information..
Here is the aerial shot from more recently. The old lake is still clearly visible as a wood. If you click on the image(s) you should get them up in a window and be able to toggle between them.