Essie Summers Retirement Village
Our retirement villages offer a range of care options - not as an add-on, but woven into the fabric of our villages.
Essie Summers care centre offers a range of care options including rest home, hospital and specialist dementia care. Like all aspects of our villages, we constantly look for ways to improve both the care we provide and the innovation behind it. Care is customised using our myRyman Care app and residents love the food in our seasonal Delicious menu, which is prepared fresh on site by village chefs.
Essie Summers is one of over 91 percent of Ryman villages that have been awarded 4-year certification by the Ministry of Health. It’s recognised as the ‘gold star’ standard in care.
Each Ryman village is named in honour of a Kiwi or Aussie trailblazer: Anthony Wilding, Lady Diana Isaac, Evelyn Page. They pushed further and set the bar high for others to aspire to. In creating communities that challenge the expectations of ageing, Ryman villages are also setting the bar high. They’re demonstrating that a retirement lifestyle brimming with new experiences, connections and fulfilment is something we should aspire to. Our Kiwi and Aussie namesakes represent the measure of inspiration, while Ryman villages represent the measure of retirement living.
Essie Summers (1912–1998)
Essie Summers stories have been relished for more than forty years. Summers, known as New Zealand’s Queen of Romance, sold more than 19 million copies of her romance novels in 105 countries.
Her vivid descriptions of the landscapes and people of New Zealand led to her being awarded The Order of the British Empire for her contributions to tourism in New Zealand.
Resilient in the face of adversity, Summers had been writing for a decade before her work was first published. A career of short stories, poetry, and newspaper columns ensued until her first novel was published by Mills & Boon in 1957.
Summers met her husband at the age of 13 but waited another 13 years until she agreed to marry him. She divided her time between her duties as a minister’s wife, their two children, and her writing.
The heroines depicted in her books share her pioneering traits; they’re brave, caring, intelligent, and continue to work after marriage which was uncommon at the time. Meanwhile, the heroes are never violent. While not considered a feminist in her time, her work is now categorised as both feminist and pacifist.
The Essie Summers Story autobiography depicts her life and was published in 1974 by Mills & Boon.
