The fete and bicycle racing was held the following year, but more extravagant expenditure resulted in a financial loss. For the 1892 sports at the cricket ground, a cinder track, six laps to the mile had been laid and 5,000 people watched the sports.
The 4th Annual Fete and Sports was held on 22nd July 1893 and the venue moved to the county Showground, King's Hill Road. The bicycle races were a one mile local handicap and a half mile open handicap which attracted 33 entries and was won by won by M Woodward of Ledbury. The meeting finished with a firework display by Professor Pauly and sons.
The sports moved back to the cricket ground in 1894 and the races were held on a grass track of six laps to the mile. For the next few years, the annual sports meetings continued to be very popular with around 300 entries and crowds of 5,000 spectators. At the 19th August 1899 sports, Mons August E Gaudron and Miss Alma Beaumont made a successful double parachute descent from a balloon.
At the turn of the century, Mikael Pedersen^^ arrived in Dursley and set up a bicycle factory manufacturing his Dursley Pedersen cycles and his three speed hub gears. Pedersen was a supporter of local sports and he built a small cycle track in his garden at Ragland House, Dursley to test his bicycle inventions.
The Dursley sports meetings continued, but financial losses at the events were reported in the press. The last bicycle racing at the sports was the 20th July 1907 meeting and the events were half and one mile open handicaps and a one mile novices race. The one mile open handicap was won by the one armed cyclist Ernest Badman who received a great ovation from the crowd.
The Dursley Recreation Ground Company acquired the cricket pitch and the pump field in 1912, it seems that cricket was the only sport that was played on the recreation ground.
The RA Lister Recreation and Social Club started holding an annual fete and sports in 1928 and bicycle races were included the following year, the races were half and one mile handicaps and a two miles open scratch. The sports were repeated on 28th June 1930 but these were the last bicycle races to be held on the recreation ground.
The ground was bought by public subscription in 1951 and was re-named the War Memorial Recreation Ground, it was a community memorial to forces who died in the Second World War. The ground is now the home of Dursley Town AFC and tennis, petanque and skateboarding are played at the ground.
** The Dursley Permanent Friendly Society was organised on the Holloway system which was devised by George Holloway (1825-1892) MP for Stroud, the society aimed to provide its members not only with a sum of money during sickness, temporary disablement or for relatives at death, but also to provide an annuity in old age.
^^ Mikael Pedersen invented a machine to separate cream from milk, he moved from Copenhagen to Dursley in 1893 to work with RA Lister, an agricultural machinery company. Pedersen designed and patented a new style of bicycle in the early 1890s which became known as the Dursley Pedersen. He formed the Pedersen Cycle Frame Company in 1896, but was unfortunately involved in a shares scam perpetrated by Ernest Terah Hooley and the company went bankrupt. He then set up the Dursley Pedersen Cycle Company and manufactured the machines at his works in Dursley. Some 30,000 bicycles were produced by the early 1920s but although the machine was technically very good and lightweight, it was relatively expensive and cost the equivalent of three months wages of a skilled man in 1899. Pedersen also designed his own hub gear units in 1902, but manufacturing faults and management disagreements marked the start of his business decline and his assets and liabilities were taken over by Listers in 1905. Bicycle production continued until 1917 by which time purchasers of the more expensive Dursley Pedersen machines had moved on to buying motor cars.
Unfortunately, Pedersen was a poor business man and difficult to work with, he lost all his money before he returned to Denmark in 1920, where he died in 1929 and was buried in a pauper's grave. In 1995, Pedersen enthusiasts raised enough money to take Mikael Pedersen's remains back to Dursley and re-buried them there and build a monument to him. The UK Veteran-Cycle Club organise an annual Pedersen Gathering at Dursley. Bicycles to Pedersen's design have been built in small numbers since his death.
