Water supply/pumbing issue

pineapple

Any plumbers on here? I have an old cottage with water downstairs to the shower room/toilet and to the kitchen on the other side of the property. Nothing upstairs.and no sign of internal pipework. I also share the water supply with the adjoining house. The water supply comes from the external stoptap in the road, up her garden path then splits to hers and mine - where it supplies my shower room/toilet and where there is an internal stop tap. There is also an ancient stop tap in the kitchen on the other side of the house which I can't budge.
I always assumed the shower room stop tap was a main one and the kitchen stop tap was subsidiary so you could do plumbing in the kitchen without turning off the whole lot. But I've now discovered that the shower room stop tap doesn't turn off the kitchen supply! Have you ever encountered this? Two internal stop taps each just servicing that area of the house?
The kitchen supply is running slower and actually stopped today when next door was running some water.I'm not 100% whether the shower room is also a bit slower.
As a first stop have contacted the water company so they can check their pressure but have a horrible feeling it could be an issue with the pipework which presumably runs under my garden and round the house to the kitchen. In which case it's down to me to sort. How do we find where the pipework is?
Thanks

Albermarle

Probably when the house was built, there was only the supply to the Kitchen sink tap, so that will be the original stoptap that is stuck. The other stoptap will have been fitted when the shower etc was fitted. It is quite common for older houses to have two stoptaps in this way.

sheenas

The interest question is why would the kitchen supply run slower than the shower. Normally you would expect the furthest taps away from the source of the water supply to have the weakest water pressure. You could test this by running the shower and see if turning the kitchen top on and off varies the supply to the shower.

You may find that the shower water is not supplied from the same supply as the kitchen, you just never know with old houses.

Ms_Chocaholic

In the meantime, have a look at the stopcock in the road, make sure it's clear of debris and that you can turn it off so that if you have a major eak at least you can run out and turn it off albeit you will also turn off the neighbours.