Hills soldiers and devout duke climbed close to Leeds (7)
I believe the answer is:
mendips
'hills' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'soldiers and devout duke climbed close to leeds' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'soldiers' could be 'men' (I've seen this before) and 'men' is present in the answer.
'duke' could be 'd' and 'd' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for mendips that I've seen is " Hills of Somerset".)