That stripped-back arrangement was not a sign of poverty or neglect so much as a reflection of who worshipped there. The Discalced Carmelites, a mendicant order whose name refers to the practice of going barefoot or wearing sandals as a mark of austerity, ran a small foundation in this part of Dublin during the eighteenth century, and what they lacked in furnishings they made up for in painted imagery. A detailed description from 1749 records an altarpiece showing the Virgin Mary presenting the scapular to St. Simon Stock, flanked by Carmelite saints and, on the opposing side, the kings, popes, and cardinals who had supported the order over the centuries. Two galleries served the congregation, even without the usual fixtures of parish worship.

The Discalced Carmelites arrived in Ireland in 1626, though their earliest Dublin foothold appears to have been in Hammond Lane on the north side of the river. Their presence at Wormwood Gate, west of Bridge Street, seems to date from around 1710 according to Nicholas Donnelly's 1904 survey of Catholic chapels in the city. The chapel was fitted out partly through the efforts of Friar Paul Kenny, the prior, and partly through the generosity of a Mr. Holywood of Artane. Five friars lived in the adjacent house, answerable not to an Irish provincial but to a vice-provincial who could be removed at the discretion of the order's general. John Rocque's 1756 map of Dublin marks the chapel with a cross in the north-east corner of St. Catherine's parish, on the western side of the boundary with St. Audoen's. By 1760 the community had moved to a courtway off Lower Stephen's Street, later known as Dawson's Court, and by 1793 they had relocated again to Clarendon Street, where the Carmelite presence is still maintained today.

The precise location of the Wormwood Gate chapel has not been established, and nothing of the structure is known to survive above ground. Rocque's 1756 map, available through various digital archives, gives the clearest indication of where it stood, near the junction of Bridge Street and the area once associated with the old city gate of the same name. The Clarendon Street church, the direct institutional successor to this foundation, is a short walk away and holds the continuing thread of that same community's history in Dublin.