The village's main pub is called The Green Man!

Ah yes - this was touched on this elsewhere (where? I've no idea!). Certainly there has always been a folkloric interest in the pub name, (which has nothing to do with the ecclesiastical foliate heads!) and given that the writers of TWM certainly did their researches into such things (mostly through The Golden Bough!) then it's hardly surprising. What is surprising however is that, other than the pub, there is no other mention of The Green Man in TWM. In any case, TWM just might represent the earliest instance of a foliate head in the context of a Green Man pub name. The confusion between the Foliate Head and The Green Man as a pub name is c/o Lady Raglan in 1939 and the modern trend for Green Man pub signs to show foliate heads derived from ecclesiastical carvings, no matter how stylised these have become in recent years.

Okay - what I'm really looking for now are publications which mention The Green Man & Foliate Heads in a pagan / folkloric context prior to 1975....