Tomorrow a service will be held in St Margaret’s church, Stratton Strawless, Norfolk, to commemorate the tricentenary of the birth of Robert Marsham, landowner, tree expert and founding father of the study of springtime.

Over 61 years at Stratton Strawless, Marsham recorded key indicators of spring’s arrival, from the earliest snowdrop to the first call of the cuckoo. In that time he realised that the timing of spring followed the pattern of weather. The winter of 1740 was one of the most savage winters known in England: gorse and heather died, rabbits starved in their warrens and beer turned to ice indoors. After the winter thawed out, Marsham searched the countryside for the first signs of spring, but he did not hear a song thrush until well into March, and hawthorn blossomed two months late, in June.

After Marsham died in 1797, aged 90, his family carried on with the springtime survey until 1958, our longest continuous chronicle of springtime. Those records help to reveal the effect of global warming in Britain. Today’s oak trees are now bursting into leaf about three weeks earlier than a century ago. Many spring flowers have now finished blooming by the time that Marsham recorded them bursting open. And many of our birds have given up migrating to warmer climes for winter, preferring to stay here for a milder British winter.