Lately I've been looking into the floor plans and interior design of old houses. This is something difficult to research, because these are functioning houses and as such have often been remodeled several times. Fortunately, I have access to some old books from the 1800s, where the Author was able to see many buildings in a relatively undisturbed state.

Of particular interest is the Kitchen along with the cooking range and how the exhaust is dealt with.

There are 2 common arrangements and variations of them for the kitchen. I'll classify them as "ALemannic" and "Burgundian"

In the Alemannic arrangement, the kitchen is 2 full stories in height. the exhaust from the cooking fires drafts slowly into the top of the kitchen where there are either holes in the top of the walls (Rouchschlitz) or the ceiling is arched an has a hole in the top with a very small chimney sticking a few inches over the floor of the attic (gwölb)
This is lousy, smoke lingers for a long time and everything gets stained with smoke. This arrangement was used as late as the 1970s in some old houses. The upper story has beamwork (Rouchni) from which meat is hung and smoked. The whole arrangement is called a smoke-kitchen (Rouch-Chuechä, Rouchhuus)

The Burgundian arrangement is better. The kitchen is only a single story in height. Above the cooking range is a giant pyramid-shaped chimney hood made of wooden planks pegged to a beam framework and plastered on the outside to seal it off (Bretterkamin). the chimney extends a few feet over the roof itself and has a flap operated by a long pole reaching down to the kitchen. The cooking fire exhausts directly into this chimney and the smoke drafted much more efficiently. Meat is hung up inside the chimney hood.

Wooden chimneys are nothing special. A lot of cultures used them. But I find the whole concept fascinating.

Of special interest here is how the smoke is handled. In most cases where a big wooden chimney is used, the fire is simply placed in the base of the chimney and the smoke -along with most of its heat- is sucked straight out. Here, the fire is enclosed in a masonry stove which exhausts through a hole in the firewall into a large masonry heating oven (stubenofen) that is an effective mass heater. You don't have to have a secondary heating source, the waste heat from cooking will warn the oven for many hours. The exhaust then snakes back through a hole in the firewall into the kitchen. In the open kitchen, it just comes out through a hole in the wall and drafts freely through the room. Where the wooden chimney is used, there is often a tube of some sort that carries the smoke into the base of the chimney, so that it won't draft around through the room.

This is all interesting because this system has been in place since the early Middle Ages. Some scholars call this the "Burgundian Chimney" because it is found in places settled by the Burgundians, and not in Alemannic territories. But it can't have been a later Medieval development of the Burgundians, because it is most found in that region that fell out of Burgundian hands in the 12th century, specifically the southwest part of the Canton of Bern especially the western part of the Berner Oberland (The Bernese Alps)

So right now, I'm fascinated with wooden chimneys. IT's one of those things that you present to modern people, and they think it's a death trap. I guess the fact that some of them have been is use for over 500 years escapes us...