SUMMARYLaboratory experiments to characterize water flow through a column consisting of an artificial double‐porosity medium are described. A gamma‐attenuation device was used to measure water storage in the intra‐ and inter‐aggregate porosity domains after successive infiltrations. Several days after macropore flow had ceased, a significant proportion of the water that had infiltrated was retained within the aggregates.After the column had been brought to its water retention capacity, several rains with different intensities were applied, and the drainage hydrographs were recorded and analysed in order to characterize water transport in the coarser pores and to test the kinematic‐wave approach to macropore flow proposed by Germann (1985). Reasonable fits of calculated hydrographs to experimental data were obtained for high input intensities, but the model was unable to reproduce the hydrographs recorded at low intensities. In particular, the model could not simulate the high dispersion of the input signal observed at low rain intensities.