Removal of ground floor interior wall with chimney?

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DH and I have found a 1920s house that we are thinking of making an offer on. To make the space work for our family though we'd want to knock down a ground floor interior wall between the existing kitchen and dining room to create a big open kitchen/diner. The interior wall has a chimney breast with fireplace. Does anyone have experience of knocking down a ground floor wall with a chimney? Is it hugely expensive? We'd intend to leave the upstairs chimney in place and also the stack. We are based in the SE.

You will need a Structural Engineer to advise. The remaining chimney above will need to be supported. The wall could be load bearing. Lots of people leave chimneys alone for this reason and work around them as a feature. Housing the cooker for example. My friend has a huge stone one between two rooms in her house. It is a feature of both rooms with an open grate both sides. That is difficult in a kitchen though!

We found the remains of a chimney in our old kitchen when we moved in. It was on an outside wall but the fire bricks were so hard, the previous owners had just built a cupboard around it and had not attempted to remove it. We did not open the cupboard doors when we viewed. We just thought they were normal cupboards under the work surface. It was very, very, hard workto remove and took a lot of drilling and slege hammering to get rid of it. Total nightmare.

We are planning to leave the chimney in our new house for reasons described above! We’ll have a pantry and utility behind it, then s range cooker in it.

We've just has a chimney breast and stack removed from our bungalow (so only one floor). That cost about £1000. Nearly half of that was for the scaffolding! I would expect it to be more for a two storey house as you will prob need additional structural support put in. Is the extra space worth it? If you were to sell later on, would the lost of an original feature affect the value?

Hmmm, so not as straightforward as I'd hoped then! Thank you all for your advice. I have to say removing an original feature doesn't really sit well with me but due to its location it's the only way we'd be able to have a decent sized kitchen/diner. But it's good to know what it involves as that definitely has a bearing on whether or not we decide to make an offer.

Unfortunately no chance of building a pantry behind this one...good advice to check in all the cupboards when viewing potential houses

We did it a few years ago. IIRC it was around £4k.

We had 2 options - take it out downstairs with an RSJ in place to support everything above it, or take out the chimney throughout the house (upstairs/ loft and stack) which involved rebuilding bedroom / landing wall upstairs as a stud wall, meaning we didnt need an RSJ. Both were roughly the same cost.

We were doing it as a temporary measure before a full blown extension which we completed last year so went with option 2 as meant extension plans werent compromised by RSJ. All apprived by structural engineer.

Just be prepared for the dust and in our case, decades of soot and dirt that came down with chimney. Also, just be aware that in 20s/30s houses, there may be have to be some extras - the floor and ceiling levels didn't quite match either side of the chimney so had to spend money sorting that.