Retew was swamped by a clay pit. At 100, Bernard Gilbert is still dancing

Bernard Gilbert stood in the middle of Worcester's Cathedral Square in a bright red shirt and a white tie, both arms above his head, and led the crowd through four dances. Hundreds of people joined in, and when he finished they applauded. 1

Gilbert is 100. He has been dancing since he was 16, when a leg broken playing rugby healed badly, the exercises his doctors prescribed made no difference, and they told him to go dancing instead. He stood in the doorway of the class until the teacher told him to clear off or come in. 2

The dance, to Roger Miller's "King of the Road", was staged by the Got 2 Sing choir, and the money collected went to Alzheimer's Research UK. Choir members and residents of Gilbert's care home learned four dances for it and rehearsed at home. 1 September is World Alzheimer's Month. 3

Gilbert's dancing began reluctantly and lasted. He won awards, and at 74, after his wife and dance partner died, he began teaching. He lives at Fernhill House in Worcester, where videos of him dancing have been watched more than 1.5 million times. 2

"I love the dancing," he told the BBC. "Once I get on the floor I forget everything, I just concentrate on what I'm doing. It brings me alive." 2

He makes the case for dancing as exercise for the mind as much as the body: you have to remember the steps, and you have to concentrate. 2 Tania Skerrit, of Berkley Care Group, which runs Fernhill House, told the BBC that the music changes him. "You can see it relaxes him and he has a big smile on his face," she said. "That's what we love." 2

Almost a million people in the UK are living with dementia. 4

Retew stood between St Stephen and St Dennis in Cornwall: about 80 people, 24 houses and a factory, with the chapel at the heart of its life. 5 The land and the houses belonged to English China Clays, and under them lay the mineral rights to Wheal Remfry. In the early 1960s the company expanded the quarry, and Retew was demolished. The quarry and its clay waste covered the ground, and nothing of the village remains; the residents were dispersed into rented accommodation in the wider community. 6

Mike Ford grew up there. "I always say it, I still say it, I was born in heaven and I hope I die there because I love the place," he said. He was about 21 when the villagers were told they would have to leave. "People didn't enjoy it at all," he said. "They all had to leave one another as friends in a way." 5

He spent 15 years on the book that came out of it, and it runs to 240 pages. Alongside the villagers who left for America and Australia, it keeps the ordinary life that went on before they did: Sunday school trips, sing-songs on the bus home, neighbours helping each other with farm work. 5 The detail that stays with me is what called at the door. A butcher's van, a baker's van, a fish and chip van, and spring water the villagers carried home in pitchers. 6

Ford has lived with multiple sclerosis for 45 years. "I wish I'd never started it, but now I've done it, I'm so pleased," he said of the finished book, The History of Retew and its People. 5

Clemoline Bunt, recorded by the BBC in 2011 for an exhibition about the village, had spent most of her life in Retew and was the last resident to leave. "My house was the last one to go," she said. "The clay pit came nearly up to my back door. When they blasted, the stones used to hit my backdoor, that's when I knew it was time to move on." 6

Copies of The History of Retew and its People are sold at the Merlin Centre in Hewas Water, near St Austell. 5

The money from the Worcester dance went to Alzheimer's Research UK, where the ways to help are set out. 1