JULY PHOTO COMP RESULTS

They look like the louvres they used to use to let the smoke out of Tudor buildings etc when they used a large open fire.

 

.....Or it could actually be a retired smoke house for smoking food.

 

Somewhat out of touch these days but because of healthy and safety/food hygiene regulations et al, ad nauseam I think the vast majority of the old smoking sheds are no more. There are a few small niche market smokers but nothing on any great scale as far as I am aware.
When I ran my business in the 80s and 90s things were changing dramatically....in many ways for the worse, certainly taste of product wise!
My products started off being smoked in traditional sheds as @shiney described. The buildings were quite tall to get a good draw on the smoke. The products didn't all come out identical as the Salmon (in my case) nearest the "fire" were more "cooked" than those on the outside. Also you would get small smuts of Oak ash on the sides.
Unfortunately the likes of Americans in particular and the rest of us as well to a certain extent wanted Salmon bright pink without black specks and all exactly the same (can't have crooked Carrots or spots on Apples syndrome).
Nowadays the vast majority of smoked products are produced in smoke factories and the smoking process is dramatically quicker, taking hours rather than days. Many "smoked" products have never been near smoke and are dyed/flavoured to sort of resemble the products of old. Can you tell that I don't go a bomb on modern day smoked products?.
Traditionally the likes of smoked Salmon was quite firm and dry not as it is today which is slimy and has the consistency of wet cotton wool to me. The whole reason for originally smoking anything was to preserve it and by doing so the water content of the food was reduced, in Salmon roughly 15% weight loss. It is a huge advantage to the producers using modern smoking methods as they are effectively able to sell the same amount of product at a higher weight as the water loss during smoking is much less. I don't know but it could well be that other smoked products are injected with water nowadays as is Bacon. I think the maximum amount of water allowed to be injected into Bacon under the EU regulations is 5%. I'll have a wee bet with you that many producers will be flouting that! The days of having crispy Bacon are a distant memory, but we have got accustomed to cheap foot in relative terms so the producers have found all sorts of ways to keep prices down and have sacrificed the taste and quality of so much of what we eat...off my soap box now

 

A smoke house in Peel, Isle of Man. As you say a taller building. I saw a brand new smoke house in Galloway a couple of years ago that was single storey.

 

I wonder if the new smokehouse you mention @Sheal is using traditional methods...unlikely. Reminds me of the smoker who I used sometimes. They expanded and applied for planning permission to build a new smokehouse (factory type, not traditional altho they planned to do small amounts of traditional smoking) in Dumbarton. They got permission for the factory from the local council and started the build. Someone from the planners visited the site to see how the build was going and was surprised to see a chimney being built. Upon being told the building was going to be a smokehouse the planner announced that this wouldn't be allowed as the area was a smokeless zone. What the .... did the planners who granted permission imagine was going to go on in the factory? It took months and months plus huge amounts of expense to eventually appease the planners enough for the build to continue! You couldn't make it up.

 

I don't know if they used traditional methods or not @silu, I only visited the shop attached to it. I do know it was privately owned, a small family business.