With 2ft-thick concrete walls and bombproof doors, the ugly nuclear bunker in north-west Scotland was meant to be a place for tracking Soviet aircraft at the height of the cold war. Fortunately, the planes never turned up and the bunker has instead become the unlikely home for a museum telling the story of Gairloch, a coastal village 75 miles from the nearest town. Gairloch Museum – the creation of which has involved determined people power, intense local pride and impressive vision – has been rewarded in the world’s biggest museum prize. On Monday it was named as one of five organisations to share the title of UK museum of the year, winning for an eight-year campaign to turn a village eyesore into something rather beautiful. Gairloch’s achievements were the result of the local community rallying together to create a new home for its collection, said the museum’s curator, Karen Buchanan. “Not only that, they have created a world-class visitor centre and a real jewel in the crown of our village and beyond.” The museum was for 40 years housed in a farm steading that it did not own. “We literally had rain coming through the ceiling,” Buchanan said. “We had also outgrown the building and we needed more space to display the collection and be able to look after it properly.” They also needed space for a new cafe and shop, but the military bunker in the centre of the village was not the obvious solution. It was built after the war as an anti-aircraft operations outpost amid fears about the threat from the Soviet Union, but was never used. Often used as a council roads maintenance depot, it would have been deployed if the worst had ever happened during periods of heightened cold war tension. It would have become a civil defence operations room, “a backup centre for Inverness had an atomic bomb hit”, Buchanan said. Museum trustees persuaded the council to sell it to them for £1 and embarked on a £2.4m fundraising campaign to convert it. About 10% of the money has come from local people in what probably felt like endless raffles and pub quizzes. “It was an enormous task for a community of this size to raise the sum we needed,” Buchanan said. “Our success has been down to sheer tenacity and vision of the local people and trustees.” Gairloch is strikingly isolated: the nearest town, Inverness, is about 75 miles away and its high school has the widest catchment area in Europe. The collection includes examples of the area’s unique geology, including the oldest rocks in western Europe, as well as many textiles, tools and furniture that shine light on the area’s social history. There is also a strong Gaelic archive, one of the star exhibits of which is the Rubh Re lighthouse lens, one of the largest and last of its kind. Creating the museum involved the removal of interior walls and the creation of windows through 2ft-thick walls; the blast doors have been kept. It opened in July 2019 and visitor numbers doubled to 12,000 in the first six months. Judges for the museum of the year prize said they had been captivated by Gairloch’s story of people power and local pride, which had “created a buzzing new community hub, and produced a sustainable cultural landmark for generations of visitors to enjoy”. Organisers of this year’s prize raised the prize money and increased the number of winners because of the coronavirus crisis. The other museums that won £40,000 each were the Science Museum in London, Towner Eastbourne art gallery, Aberdeen art gallery and the South London gallery. Jenny Waldman, the director of the Art Fund, which organises what is the world’s biggest museum prize, said the winners were all “exceptional examples of museums offering inspiration, reflection and joy in the heart of our communities”. All UK museums were facing financial peril because of the pandemic, she said. “Not only do we need sustained investment from government, but we encourage everyone to go and explore their local museum. They need our support now.”