Easter Bonnet Parade at the Pandora Inn

A stunning array of millinery is judged as part of the Easter celebrations.

Hidden away near Mylor Bridge on the River Fal, the Pandora Inn on Restronguet Creek holds an Easter bonnet parade. Easter parades are popular events in some world cities and are based loosely on processions for the Christian celebration of Palm Sunday initiating Easter week. The challenge is to decorate bonnets and be judged for effort and wearability by processioning the millinery through the streets. It is now more often than not accompanied by full costume-wearing.

The Pandora Inn is a 13th century tavern on Restronguet Creek a tidal ria leading to Carrick Roads, the drowned river valley of the Fal estuary. Known as a stopover between Truro and the port town of Falmouth, The Passage House was renamed in 1851 after HMS Pandora. The Pandora led an ill-fated mission to round up Captain Bligh’s mutineers from HMS Bounty and its journey ended on the Great Barrier Reef where the wreck was rediscovered in 1977. HMS Pandora’s links to the pub and a ship’s figurehead held there have not been established. Irving Berlin’s musical Easter Parade (1948) stars Judy Garland and Fred Astaire and took its idea from New York’s Fifth Avenue Easter Parade which began in the 1870s.