Katharine Hepburn, released from a Hartford hospital yesterday, is resting and relaxing at her Old Saybrook, Conn., estate, a hospital spokesman and friends and neighbors said.

“She wanted very much to go home. The infection she had cleared up several days ago, and her doctor had kept her a few days longer so she could regain the strength she had before she was admitted,” hospital spokesman James Battaglio said yesterday.

The feisty, 94-year old four-time Oscar winner was rushed to the hospital by ambulance July 19 suffering from what Battaglio later said was a urinary-tract infection.

“God bless her. She’s one tough lady! They couldn’t hold her in the hospital longer than she wants to,” John Sexton, a family friend who lives near Hepburn, told The Post.

“Kate’s determined not to die in any hospital. And she won’t stay in one hour more than is necessary,” family friend Jones Harris, the son of actress Ruth Gordon and director Jed Harris, told The Post.

Just weeks before Hepburn went into the hospital, neighbors saw her taking a few halting steps on the beach in front of her home overlooking Long Island Sound. But Sexton says, “She doesn’t get out of the house very much any more.”

In 1996, Hepburn moved from her Manhattan townhouse to her family compound in the upscale Fenwick section of Old Saybrook.