Named after a wood used by colliers, or charcoal burners.
In the past a collier was someone who made charcoal, not a coal miner. The name was first recorded in 1632. The wood stood east of the high street, roughly where Warren, Marlborough and Birdhurst Roads are now; Ordnance Survey maps still show it in the 1870s, but it had been cleared for building by the mid-1890s.