Old Kitchen Chimney Removal

[musashi79uk]

Hi,
The corner of my kitchen has been rounded off since I bought the house 12 years ago.
I'm going to the expense of renovating downstairs. I've done the bathroom so its now onto the kitchen.
I was told by someone that the rounded corner in the kitchen could be ventilation for an old stove and to take some plaster off and a brick out to look behind it.
I've done that and sure enough, it looks like an old chimney. I've attached photos. The wall squares off fine behind the one course of angled bricks and is covered in soot.
Will that one course of roughly laid bricks (they are laid on their facing edges if you know what I mean - the edges you would normally see from outside of the house) be supporting anything?
The kitchen is small so removing the rounded corner would give me the ability to have a corner unit with pull out shelves in there to increase the storage and not have it as "dead space."
There is a small square section in my son's room that runs from the floor to the ceiling that could be directly above it. Its probably 45cm x 45cm. Its not directly next to the wall.
__ ___________________
It runs like | |__| | | |
wall (1) ^ ^ chimney? bed ^ ^ external wall

Wall 1 divides the from bedroom and rear bedroom. The same wall that divides the living room and kitchen doesn't seem to be in the same place. Downstairs, it seems to be about 1'6" further towards the rear of the house as this rounded corner seems to extend up through the upstairs chimney which is about 1'6" away from the dividing wall.
If I need an expert to come in and look at it, who would I need? A builder?

Thanks and I hope the above made sense.

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

The best thing to do is first go outside and see if you have a single chimney pot stack in the right place. If you have this is the first thing to remove then make the roof good. Then go into the loft and remove this flue. Or if there is no single pot stack through the roof, figure out where it is/was going to and remove it, making good the hole in the bedroom ceiling. You can see where this is going. Removing the whole stack will help you in the kitchen and the bedroom. If you just remove the kitchen bit then you will need some simple metal brackets to hold the bottom bricks of the bedroom flue in place. Which will be fiddlely and no advantage of a clear bedroom wall.
Frank