The event of note this month was held at Kingshill Cemetery to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the re-interment of Mikael Pedersen. Around 1888, Mikael Pedersen came to Dursley from Denmark. He brought with him a design for a unique bicycle, the Dursley Pedersen, by which he is mostly known today.

Mikael was a highly talented engineer and for several years he was unofficial consultant to the engineering firm of R A Lister & Co. Ltd. When he arrived, Dursley was still suffering from the disastrous collapse of the woollen cloth trade several decades earlier. It can be said that it was because of Mikael’s ingenuity that the town and surrounding area began to pull out of poverty and declining population.

Soon after the end of World War One, Mikael Pedersen returned to Denmark. Almost penniless because of a lifetime of openhanded generosity, he ended his life in an old people's home in Copenhagen, largely ignored by his family. He died in 1929 and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1995 his remains were brought to England and reburied in Dursley’s cemetery. That event created great interest and was widely reported in the Gazette and national press.