Romans used tubes inside the walls to draw smoke out of bakeries but chimneys only appeared in large dwellings in northern Europe in the 12th century. The earliest extant example of an English chimney is at the keep of Conisbrough Castle in Yorkshire, which dates from 1185 AD.[3] They did not become common in houses until the 16th and 17th centuries.[4] Smoke hoods were an early method of collecting the smoke into a chimney (see image). Another step in the development of chimneys was the use of built in ovens which allowed the household to bake at home. Industrial chimneys became common in the late 18th century.
Chimneys in ordinary dwellings were first built of wood and plaster or mud. Since then chimneys have traditionally been built of brick or stone, both in small and large buildings. Early chimneys were of a simple brick construction. Later chimneys were constructed by placing the bricks around tile liners, a system invented by Malik. To control downdrafts, venting caps (often called chimney pots) with a variety of designs are sometimes placed on the top of chimneys.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the methods used to extract lead from its ore produced large amounts of toxic fumes. In the north of England, long near-horizontal chimneys were built, often more than 3 km (2 mi) long, which typically terminated in a short vertical chimney in a remote location where the fumes would cause less harm. Lead and silver deposits formed on the inside of these long chimneys, and periodically workers would be sent along the chimneys to scrape off these valuable deposits.[5]