This article aims to examine rural population/residential movements through a mobilities perspective to provide an inclusive analysis of the diverse processes of movement that (re)produce rural places beyond the dominant counter urbanisation narrative. We seek to contribute to the literature in two ways. Firstly, we examine a sample of rural residents who have moved house within a 10 year period to examine the full range of actually existing residential mobilities, including counter urbanisation, lateral in‐migration and local mobility within an Irish context. We suggest that counter urbanisation provides only a partial explanation of rural mobility accounting for 44 per cent of our recent movers – moreover, within the counter urbanisation group, approximately a half of this group were originally from a rural context suggesting a more nuanced ‘return‐to‐roots’ movement rather than a stereotypical urban‐rural movement. Secondly, we explore two relatively new dimensions of rural mobilities – the importance of the actual house characteristics to where respondents moved to and the pull of family networks as key mobility factors. In the Irish context explored in this article, we argue that rather than a search for greenspace and idyllic landscapes, decision‐making is often driven by a desire for more private space (internal and external) and the presence of existing family networks.